Bruce Podwal
PB USA

Highway projects, intelligent transportation systems programs, building assessments, PB subsidiaries. Project Manager Bruce Podwal has been at the helm of all of them during his 42 years with the firm.

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Bruce was drawn to civil engineering because, as he puts it, “the idea of traveling around the world to build major projects seemed exciting to a 13-year-old.” Having lived and worked for PB in five states as well as in Turkey and Hong Kong, Bruce made that excitement a lifelong reality.

These days, he’s immersed in managing the reconstruction of Houston’s notoriously clogged Katy Freeway. The long-awaited project will add seven lanes for both the general public and a tollway in the median to provide better peak-hour service and accommodate a future light rail transit system. Bruce is certain PB’s combined expertise in highways, tollways and transit has meant value-added service to the Texas Department of Transportation. The $2 billion project will be completed in 2009; by fall 2003, nearly $500 million should be in construction.

Bruce, a certified Principal Project Manager and Principal Professional Associate, learned project management from the ground up, attributing his early knowledge to three mentors at PB. “Art Jenny (top highway project manager in the 1960s) taught me to worry about the details—the science of project management,” he says. “Bill Dyckman (former PB partner and member of the Board of Directors) taught me to deal with the big picture—the politics of project management. Jim Lammie taught me to manage megaprojects—the art of project management. All three taught me how to do so ethically.”

To that superior coaching he brought natural leadership ability. “I’m a typical first-born. I want to lead any group I’m in,” Bruce admits.

But he’s not afraid to pass the baton.
“I try to select the best people and then I delegate,” says Bruce, noting he starts training future managers from the start. At the outset of a megaproject, he asks the local manager to assign a junior engineer to him. “My intent is to help junior engineers gain an understanding of what’s needed, so they can go on to lead such projects in the future.”

Bruce’s management prowess has impressed his peers.

“I've been lucky to work with Bruce in a number of PB capacities. What has always struck me is the clarity of his thinking, his innate sense of fairness, his plainspokenness, and his keen intelligence,” says Lisa Nungesser, Atlantic District Manager for the Americas Infrastructure company. “It’s always a pleasure working with him.”

Bruce jokes that he likes to lead the largest, most complex, most controversial projects—such as the West Side Highway (Westway) project in New York City—but that it’s not until he joins those projects that they become so complex.

“Actually, I thrive on the problem-solving needed for difficult projects, especially those about which even the client is worried. I see part of my job as reassuring clients they did the right thing selecting PB,” says Bruce.

Over the years, he’s developed a failsafe management philosophy. “I plan for the worst and hope for the best. And more often than not those plans are needed because the hopes aren’t realized.”