His Family Helped Build Detroit. Now He's Engineering Downtown's Resurgence
New Burns & McDonnell Office Stirs Memories for Ben Nabozny, Working to Bring Jobs Home
Jan 17, 2018, 11:49 ET
DETROIT, Jan. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ben Nabozny can still feel the brick and smell the mortar, the raw materials that his dad — and dad's brothers and father before him — had loaded and stacked and put into place for dozens of sidewalks and patios and walls for what at the time were some of the newest buildings in downtown Detroit.
Those buildings may be old now, but such pivotal construction projects in the early 1900s through the 1990s live on through memories and stories that continue to form Nabozny's solid foundation of love, commitment and enthusiasm for the Motor City.
And now that he leads a new Burns & McDonnell engineering and project office downtown, he's ready to put his passion to work revving the Motor City's resurgence.
"Knowing that my dad, my uncles and my grandpa all built this city — using their own bricks and mortar and blocks, using their bare hands — it's incredibly personal for me to come in here and do infrastructure work," Nabozny says. "We're currently supporting several electrical transmission and distribution projects and will continue expanding into the commercial, manufacturing, restaurant and retail, aviation, water, environmental and transportation markets. We're here to make a difference. We're here to grow, and to help Detroit grow."
Nabozny joined Burns & McDonnell in 2017 with more than a decade of engineering, project and management experience across the state and country. He'd previously worked in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a project engineer, proposal manager, project manager and chief engineer on power-delivery projects — most recently high-voltage substations and overhead transmission lines ranging from 13.8 kV to 345 kV.
Burns & McDonnell — ranked No. 1 in Power by Engineering News-Record (ENR) — expects to hire more than 100 engineers, project managers and support professionals in Michigan throughout the next five years, as the employee-owned firm invests in design and construction opportunities generated by growing industrial and infrastructure needs in Detroit and throughout Michigan.
"We're busy helping our clients expand and upgrade their energy infrastructure, helping set the foundation for expanded services, new businesses and more jobs," says Mike Folta, Burns & McDonnell vice president. "Now we're hiring even more Michigan talent, to continue our work and expand our offerings."
Nabozny looks forward to helping restore Detroit's standing as a metro area of prominence, continuing the momentum that continues to pick up speed.
"The opportunities are amazing," says Nabozny, who grew up in Detroit — his family supported by the bricklaying business — and earned an engineering degree at Michigan Technological University. "At Burns & McDonnell we can take projects, a wide range of projects, all the way from concept to completion, or at any point in between. And to do this in Detroit, we'll be writing history. This kind of resurgence has never been done, and that's what really fuels us. We're excited to be a part of it."
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About Burns & McDonnell
Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies made up of more than 6,000 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune's 2017 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit burnsmcd.com.
Contact: Elle Jenkins, Burns & McDonnell
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SOURCE Burns & McDonnell