Grilling food on the jobsite, linking to first responder phone networks, transporting crews by boat and housing workers in mobile trailers at a nearby airport are all ways Ryan Hamrick’s team worked around extraordinary obstacles to restore access to Florida’s Sanibel Island after its only link to the mainland was cut off when Hurricane Ian made landfall there last Sept. 30.

On the morning of June 20, 2021, Andrew Hallett faced a career-defining moment. A senior project manager at Pittsfield, Maine-based Cianbro, Hallett helped lead a team that built a 5,338-ton concrete precast structure that would serve as the entrance of a new navigation lock basin at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Only two years into recovery after battling more than a decade of drug addiction, Thomas S. Gunning, executive director of the Building Trades Employers Association Northeast, learned about the skyrocketing number of opioid overdoses in the construction industry and desperately wanted to help.

When it comes to shepherding development projects large and small through Boston’s byzantine approval process, Brian Golden literally had the golden touch.

During his final 20 months in the U.S. Navy, Carlos Diaz was part of a team deconstructing a nuclear aircraft carrier for refurbishment. The experience made him want to be a designer.

When development hit a snag in 2021 on NET Power LLC’s still unproven technology to allow power plants to burn natural gas with near-zero emissions while producing dispatchable energy, Ron DeGregorio stepped up to lead the effort as CEO.

Rick Cotton pulled no punches when talking about the need to transform LaGuardia International Airport. Speaking to ENR last year while standing in the light-filled, glossy new Terminal B, he said, “LaGuardia had become the laughingstock of the city, nation and probably the world.

Safety executive for large energy contractor Quanta Services Compher leads a team to reduce its severe and fatal accidents by overhauling company practices according to “new view” safety principles. It seems to be working.

Structural engineer Sean P. Clifton owes his career trajectory to the liquid “sloshing” damper. As a graduate student at the University of Texas Austin, he watched with fascination as a guest lecturer demonstrated the action of the device—which damps a tall building’s sway—using a 1-ft-tall “homemade” oscillator to represent a skyscraper.

ENR Midwest is honored to name Paul VanDuyne as its 2023 Legacy Award winner.