2023 Speakers
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William Adams, PE
Mr. Adams joined Volkert in June 2022 as a Senior Vice President of the East Gulf Region, made up of infrastructure improvements in Alabama and Tennessee. Before that he enjoyed a 34-year career with the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) where he served as Assistant Chief Engineer for Pre-Construction.
Notable projects: Corridor X/I-22, SR 133 Patton Island Bridge, Us 231 Tallapossa River bridge replacements, Us 331 Opp Bypass, Montgomery Outer Loop, Tuscaloosa east Bypass, I-759 Extension in Gadsden, the Memphis to Atlanta Corridor, and I-59/20 reconstruction improvements. |
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Chris Bongfeldt, PE
Chris has over 40 years of experience managing various types of construction projects. Project Management of water/wastewater construction to major roadway/bridge DOT work. He has over 20 years of experience in managing TDOT projects of various sizes. Most notably, the new alignment of SR321 in Loudon County, TN, including a new bridge over the Tennessee River at Ft. Loudoun Lock and Dam, and over the Little Tennessee River. This project included the removal of the existing bridge previously built on the Lock and Dam. Another recent project was the phased construction of a new bridge in Montgomery County over the Cumberland River in Clarksville on SR13/48. The bridge was constructed using drilled shafts for the substructure. There were 21 drilled shafts, 10’ in diameter and averaged 125’ in depth. In 2021, Chris was invited to speak at TDOT’s Operations Symposium about the drilled shaft construction used in this project. Currently he is overseeing the project that will realign SR255/Donelson Pike near the Nashville Airport. This project includes the realignment of Donelson Pike, construction of the new roadway and a DDI interchange, 4 bridges and 6 retaining walls.
Chris lives in Clarksville, TN with his wife and family. In his spare time, he enjoys golfing and traveling with his wife Pam. |
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Harrison Bruce, PE
Harrison Bruce is a project manager for HMB Professional Engineers with 5 years of roadway design, water resources, and survey experience. Harrison is originally from Cookeville, TN but now resides in Mt. Juliet. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Tennessee Tech University and is licensed as a Professional Engineer in Tennessee.
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Dr. Meredith Cebelak
Dr. Meredith Cebelak is the TSM&O Department Leader for the Tennessee market with Gresham Smith. She is a subject matter expert in big data, ITS and freight and has over 20 years of professional experience in the design, implementation and evaluation of multi-faceted transportation engineering solutions with multiple years dedicated to connected and automated vehicles (CAV). She has experience working with local, state and federal agencies guiding projects from concept to construction, and has been actively involved in the transportation research community through research projects and publications. She currently is an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University where she teaches Traffic Engineering and Transportation Systems Design courses.
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Carl Chaifetz
Carl Chaifetz is a project manager with Parsons and has been with them for almost 16 years. He moved to Memphis 3 years ago and before that lived in Indianapolis. He graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in civil engineering and engineering management. His background is in roadway design, roadway lighting and traffic before he started managing projects. He’s currently working on some pretty cool jobs in both Indiana and Tennessee that are in various stages of design and construction. In his free time, he likes to read American History books, likes to relax by the pool and go on trips with his family.
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Cody Crews, P.E.
Cody has extensive experience in the transportation field involving urban and rural roadway projects, diverging diamond interchanges, roundabout, streetscape, interchange, storm sewer, and utility design for multiple states and municipalities. His area of expertise is roadway design, constructability reviews and utility deconfliction. Cody looks through as many lenses as possible when creating plans for projects to make sure his perspective serves the client’s interests the best. Above all, Cody, who loves working with the public, prides himself on breaking down technical engineering lingo in a way that any audience can understand.
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Matt D'Angelo, P.E.
Matt is Gresham Smith’s Transportation Systems Management and Operations Practice Leader from Nashville, TN. For the last 25 years, Matt has served clients throughout the US including the Federal Highway Administration, state DOTs, toll authorities and local agencies. Matt currently supports the Technical Advisory Committee for the TennSMART Consortium, the Transportation Research Board, ITS America, and ITE on how to apply emerging technologies and operational strategies to create healthy and thriving communities. Outside of his profession, Matt supports his church community and shares life with his wife Mary, who graciously tolerates his electric guitar hobby.
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Joe DeFiore, P.E.
As Senior Director of Business Development for Archer Western, Joe brings 20+years of Alternative Delivery experience in the construction industry. Throughout his career, he has been involved in projects of all types and sizes with different types of delivery methods, including traditional design-build, CM/GC, and P3. These projects have encompassed various types of heavy civil transportation infrastructure, including interstate expansion, large river crossings, tunnels, and toll lanes. In his current role, Joe pursues new business and expands the company's brand across the public and private markets in the transportation sector throughout the Southeast.
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Brett Jensen, PE
Brett Jensen has over 20 years of experience delivering a wide range of roadway design projects, including an expertise in roadway design, traffic and safety, signal design, quality management and construction management. Because of his knowledge and experience in UDOT and AASHTO safety standards, Brett is currently one of two consultants providing UDOT Traffic and Safety design oversight. Brett’s attention to detail and previous experience as a quality and risk manager enable him to manage the quality and risk processes on projects he is assigned. His experience in working with TDOT includes assisting with the creation of the Project Delivery Network (PDN), assisting with development of project specific risk registers and detailed project schedules. Brett is currently working as a project management mentor on TDOT Region 2 PDN transition projects.
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Jacob Johnston, PE
Jacob is a professional engineer with over 10 years of experience designing electrical systems for high-performance buildings and campuses. His career started in California, developing expertise across the industry including commercial, healthcare, higher education, central utility plant, and utility master planning projects. Jacob has a passion for sustainable development, renewable energy, and electric vehicles, and regularly integrates these concepts on projects from SSR’s Nashville, TN home base.
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Jeremiah Johnston, PE
Jeremiah Johnston is an expert at developing and sharpening multi-discipline workflows for various technical and public-facing documents. Over his 17 years in the industry, Jeremiah has authored and/or edited over 175 technical, program management, and environmental documents for over 45 local, state, and federal agencies. He has led process development initiatives for numerous DOTs, including recent work on TDOT’s Project Delivery Network, UDOT’s Progressive Design-Build Process (one of the first PDBs in the nation), NCDOT’s Project Delivery Network, and NDOT’s Alternative Delivery Guidelines. Jeremiah has collaborated with both local technical staff and executive leadership in crafting compelling messaging, guidance, and technical content.
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Taylor Hagood
Taylor is a University of Tennessee graduate from Knoxville, Tennessee. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering in 2015 and currently serves as Principal and Client Service Lead for LDA Engineering in Nashville, Tennessee. Taylor has 10 years of experience in transportation, water resources, and program management. LDA Engineering currently serves as the Sidewalk and Bikeway Program Management consultant partnering with NDOT. Taylor is currently leading the implementation and development of the collaborative and alternative delivery programs for multimodal facilities through NDOT.
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Paige Heintzman, PE
Paige, is an Assistant Vice President at WSP USA Inc. (WSP) and serves as a Project Manager, with a focus on and in Tennessee, to ensure quality transportation projects are delivered in cost-efficient and innovative means. Paige holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Tennessee Technological University and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Paige has over 11 years of experience – with a focus on transportation engineering including roadway design, planning, and traffic. Prior to joining WSP in 2020, she worked for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) for 7 years, within multiple division including Strategic Transportation Investments, Aeronautics, and Human Resources. When not at work, Paige is either running, teaching (or taking!) hot yoga, or spending time with her husband, Grant, and their chocolate standard poodle, Lucy.
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Brian Gaffney, PEBrian has been a local Nashville area resident for more than forty years. After attending downtown Nashville’s Hume Fogg Academic High School, he graduated from Auburn University in 2001 with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. Brian has worked in the Nashville area for the past 22 years and is currently the Transportation Group Manager in Benesch’s Tennessee Division. He’s played a key role in shaping Tennessee’s transportation infrastructure, mostly recently serving as Project Manager for the high-profile widening of I-65 in Robertson County, TN.
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Clayton Markham
Clayton is the Director of Alternative Contracting and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Tennessee Technological University, a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Tennessee, a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Tennessee Tech and is a licensed engineered with the State of Tennessee. Since joining the Department in 2008, Clayton has previously served as a Roadway Design Specialist in the Headquarters Design Division, Operations District Supervisor in the Columbia Construction Office, CE Manager 1 in the Headquarters Construction Office, and as the Region 3 Alternative Contracting CE Manager 2. In this previous recent roles, Clayton served as the Project Manager for the I-440 Reconstruction Design-Build project and Broadway Bridge Replacement CM/GC project in Nashville.
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Brad Montgomery
Brad studied at Tennessee Tech University where he earned a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering. He worked in the TDOT Region 3 Utility Department for 2 years and has worked in the TDOT Region 3 Survey Office for 5 years. In 20I8 Brad obtained his professional engineering license in Tennessee. He obtained his Part 107 license in 2019. Brad used his part 107 license to do drone surveys while he was working in Region 3 Survey office. In 2021 he became a Licensed Surveyor in Tennessee and promoted to Transportation Manager 1 at TDOT Aerial Surveys.
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Ben Ledsinger, PE
Ben is a Principal within SSR and leads the transportation design practice. He has 23 years’ experience, in both the public and private sectors. Over his career he has worked on all types and scales of transportation, and transportation related projects. A Tennessee native, he has spent all of his career advancing transportation projects for communities, and clients all over the country. His passion is bringing good projects forward to construction and completion and getting good people involved in making it happen. Ben is married with two children, and enjoys spending time traveling and being outdoors with them as they grow.
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Robert W. Lewis, PE
Robert is an infrastructure consulting executive focused on leveraging his 27 years of public sector transportation service to support state DOTs with strategies to maximize funding and program execution. He possesses progressive experience working with state DOTs and other state government institutions in developing and implementing leading practice programs and policies. Prior to HNTB, Robert was chief operating officer at NCDOT where he led overall operations and strategy for the department, managing an 80,000-mile highway network and an annual budget of $5.8 billion.
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Amy Lorentz, PE
Amy Lorentz began working for TDOT in 2017, starting on the training team and then moving to the CADD Support unit. She earned her Master’s in Civil Engineering from UTK. Prior to switching to engineering, she studied Mathematics and Computer Science, and worked for many years at Hewlett-Packard as a Firmware designer. When away from her computer, she enjoys gardening and walks with her dogs.
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Jennifer Lloyd, PE
Jennifer has been with TDOT for almost 27 years. She is a graduation of TTU. Since 2014, she has been the Director of Roadway Design and Aerial Survey where she over sees 12 units including Aerial Survey, Design Guidelines, Roadway Standard Drawings, Traffic Work Zone, ADA, VE, Pavement Design, Consultant Oversight and Plan Sales. Jennifer has designed projects, managed projects, taught computer software, and is active in the recruitment of employees for TDOT. She serves as a voting member of the AASHTO Committee on Design and serves as the Vice-Chair of the AASHTO Joint Committee on Electronic Deliverables. She is the Chair on two National Cooperative Highway Research Program Panels: 10-113-Quality management for 3D Model-Based Project Development and Delivery and for 0726-Update of Highway Capacity Manual Merge, Diverge, and Weaving Methodologies.
Jennifer lives in Gladeville, TN. She is busy with her 13 and 17 year old girls. In her free time, she is doing yardwork, gardening, working on her flowers or just anything to be outside. |
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Dan McGaha
Dan McGaha is a Senior Transportation Engineer working out of HDR’s Brentwood office. He graduated in 1998 from Tennessee Technological University with a bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering. His experience in Tennessee ranges from work on widening of the I-240 Corridor in Memphis to the Volkswagen SIA project in Chattanooga. He is currently working with TDOT on the Blue Oval Project, using the Project Delivery Network process. Dan and his family have called the Nashville area home for nearly 25 years.
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Darrell “DJ” Leigh-Manuell
Darrell “DJ” Leigh-Manuell has been dedicated to the transportation asset maintenance industry for over 25 years in various field level through executive leadership capacities throughout North America and Europe. This experience has reinforced DJ’s belief that a successful asset maintenance contract must be built upon a solid client relationship that utilizes partnering principles to ensure project objectives are met without sacrificing service delivery.
As the President of Walsh Infrastructure Management, a member of the Walsh Group with Walsh Construction and Archer Western Construction, DJ continues to use his experience gained through field inspections and condition assessments, damage repair design, project and program management, and project pursuits ranging from stand-alone maintenance projects to multi-billion dollar PPP projects to improve the asset maintenance industry through formulation of creative and innovative solutions to both complex and routine problems. |
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Randy Park, PE
Randy Park, PE | has over 32 years of experience in the transportation industry with 28 years of service with UDOT. He served for the last 18 years of his career as a Region Director and Chief Engineer. He retired 4 years ago and joined Avenue Consultants where he has DOT process improvements. He understands that good process and procedures are the root of the department’s integrity. Randy has been asked by multiple states and most recently the North Carolina DOT and the Tennessee DOT to assist in process improvements that include developing project delivery networks, implementation of Project Management, Training development and facilitation, creation of manuals of instruction and informative videos. These efforts significantly improved program and project delivery but most importantly created a culture of success.
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Nate Pickering
Nate graduated from Tennessee tech in Fall of 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and focus in transportation and materials. He has 5 years of experience in roadway design from survey through construction at TDOT and LDA Engineering. Nate currently serves as Multimodal Project Manager for LDA Engineering on the NDOT Sidewalk and Bikeway Program Management team.
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John Rehm
John has been a local Nashville area resident for nearly two decades. He graduated from the University at Buffalo in 1994 with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. John has worked in the Nashville area for the past 18 years and is currently the Roadway Group Leader for Arcadis in Tennessee. He’s been involved in a variety of roadway design, STID and on-call support projects for TDOT and is currently serving as Arcadis’s Project Manager for the G-2 Blue Oval projects and the ORD Support On-Call contract.
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Carma Smith
Carma Smith is a graduate of Tennessee Tech. in Civil Engineering. She has 21 years of experience with TDOT. Carma is currently the Assistant Director in the Environmental Division which oversees the Offices of Environmental Engineering, Mitigation, Compliance Field Services and Compliance Facilities. Previous experience includes the Assistant Director over NEPA, Historic Preservation, Archaeology, Air & Noise, Hazardous Materials and Business Services Office.
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Lee Smith
Lee Smith is the Interim Director of Traffic Operations with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) in Nashville, TN. Lee graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering.
After serving in the US Army after college, Lee has served in many different disciplines within the Civil and Traffic Engineering fields while working in the private and public sector over the last 25 years. Among Lee’s notable assignments are City Traffic Engineer with the City of Pensacola, FL and TSMO/ITS Program Manager with FDOT (District 3). In 2018, Lee joined TDOT as Assistant Director of Traffic Operations. This role allows him to be involved in all aspects of Traffic Operations, from TMC Operations, Safety Service Patrols to ITS and Traffic Signal deployments, integrating TSM&O strategies throughout Tennessee and delivering a safe and efficient transportation system to motorists. Lee brings experience as both a designer and maintainer of ITS/traffic infrastructure, proven project management skills, and a passion for operating our roadways safely and efficiently as well as pursuing bold and innovative milestones in freeway and arterial traffic management. Lee and his longsuffering, patient wife, Suzanne, have two kids: Natalie, age 14 and Charlie, age 11. |
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Daniel Walton, PE
Daniel has 24 years of civil and transportation engineering experience, working on many different types of projects from the planning stages through final construction. His experience includes the design and management of multiple projects for urban roadway design incorporating bike and pedestrian facilities and streetscape design. Daniel is well versed in local, state, and federal requirements and utilizes all appropriate standards, as well as TDOT Local Programs Guidelines.
Daniel grew up in Robertson County, graduated from Springfield High School, and received his Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering in Transportation from TSU. Daniel has two kids Noah and Taylor and a new grandson Lake. He is a member of the Leadership PE class of 2020. |
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Jason Watts, Esq., AICP
North Florida Group Director, HNTB Corp.
Jason Watts is a transportation planning and legal professional with fifteen years of experience in infrastructure project development, complex procurements, environmental project evaluations, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) assignment, and large-scale alternative delivery projects such as design-build (DB), DB finance (DBF), progressive DB, and public-private partnerships (P3). Prior to joining HNTB in 2021, he served as the Director of Environmental Management for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) building and solidifying Florida’s NEPA assignment program while successfully working with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) through their audits and assessments. He also has served as FDOT’s Chief Counsel for Contracts and was instrumental in all Department alternative delivery methodologies and practices, being a direct part of many of the largest FDOT endeavors. Jason is a 1998 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he earned a B.S. in mathematics. He went on to earn his J.D. from Florida State University in 2003. He is a registered member of the Florida Bar and the American Institute of Certified Planners. |
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Brandon WebbBrandon Webb has served as TDOT Transportation Manager 2 and an Aerial Survey Manager. He has 20+ Years of Survey and Mapping Experience. Brandon obtained his degree in is Computer Information Systems from MTSU and is a Part 107 UAS Pilot.
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David Webber, PE, ENV SP
David joined Volkert in 1993 and recently served as East Division President where he led 9 states and provided leadership for Volkert’s roadway, structural, utility, aviation, and environmental practices. In 2022 he was promoted to Chief Engineer and was charged with leading efforts to refine our design processes with a focus on quality, technical expertise and talent development.
Notable projects: Mobile River Bridge, Corridor X (I-22), the I-59/I-20 Reconstruction in Birmingham and the West Alabama Highway |