Federal Engineer of the Year

2024 Federal Engineer of the Year Ceremony
THE 2024 FEDERAL ENGINEER OF THE YEAR AWARD CEREMONY ON FEBRUARY 23 AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB IN WASHINGTON, DC.

Congratulations to Capt. Stephen Martin Jr., Ph.D., P.E., of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as the Federal Engineer of the Year Award for 2024.

  • Capt. Stephen Martin Jr., Ph.D., P.E., of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as the Federal Engineer of the Year Award for 2024
  • Capt. Stephen Martin Jr., Ph.D., P.E., of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as the Federal Engineer of the Year Award for 2024


Congratulations to the FEYA Top Ten Finalists

Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Dahms, P.E.

Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Dahms, P.E.

U.S Department of the Navy
Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC)
China Lake, California

NAVAL ENGINEER ADVANCES BETTER PROJECT PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Since June 2022, Dahms has been the operations officer and supervisory general engineer (SGE) at China Lake, managing a $3.87 billion earthquake recovery program that includes 27 projects and three construction offices. Aside from improving overall construction management protocol, his SGE team has addressed staffing constraints on nine recovery projects at the China Lake Propulsion Laboratory. Valued at $400 million, these projects support the research, development, testing, and evaluation of the Navy’s advanced aerial weapons systems. Earlier in 2020, Dahms served as officer in charge of the Naval Support Unit under the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. In that role, his team directed nearly 90 sensitive missions to install, maintain, and repair security systems worldwide.

While working on his master’s degree in sustainable design and construction at Stanford University, Dahms authored the paper “Using Probability Management to Predict Performance on Navy Military Construction Projects.” His work has influenced changes within NAVFAC to improve key performance indicators, better assess construction project risk, and improve project estimating. Moreover, Dahms’ advances in probability management have been adopted for training purposes by the Society of American Military Engineers.


Cmdr. Christopher Fehrman, P.E.

Cmdr. Christopher Fehrman, P.E.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Indian Health Service (IHS)
Anchorage, Alaska

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER OVERSEES NEW SANITATION FACILITY PROJECTS

As director of sanitation facilities construction, Fehrman is responsible for the coordination of projects with the largest Tribal consortium in the United States in terms of geographical size and funding. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) in preparation for fiscal 2023 funding, Fehrman provided guidance, mentoring, and comprehensive technical reviews for 290 sanitation proposals, yielding 50 ready-for-procurement projects totaling $515 million. This was a capitalization increase greater than double the previous year under his command.

With significant increases in IHS funding from the BIL, a historic number of projects have been underwritten with Fehrman’s oversight, namely as a sanitation facilities expert and technical advisor. IHS projects can contain financial restrictions known as ineligible costs for which outside funding is required prior to construction. Fehrman diligently collaborated with other federal agencies in a whole-of-government approach to secure an additional $38 million to finance construction on 156 such projects. Through this endeavor, he built coalitions with the Rural Development Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Denali Commission, and the state of Alaska to provide more than $2 billion in sanitation facilities to Alaskan Native homes and communities.


Timothy Fritch, P.E.

Timothy Fritch, P.E.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
Reliability Authority and Regional Operations
Chattanooga, Tennessee

ELECTRICAL ENGINEER FOLLOWS NEW ROUTE TO GAUGE GRID RELIABILITY

Reliability analysis manager Fritch oversees power grid integrity, outage coordination support, operator tools, and procedures to ensure customer power delivery and security of the Eastern Interconnection, one of two major AC electrical grids in the North American power transmission network. His team, which performs regular comprehensive outage studies identifying TVA system reliability concerns, identified more than 250 issues over a three-year period that resulted in an annual cost savings of $6.3 million. In 2022, Fritch led an investigation for the North American Electric Reliability Organization (NERC) of an Eastern Interconnection wide-area oscillation event, gathering data from impacted utilities and presenting his findings.

Fritch also heads TVA research on two industry synchrophasor projects sponsored by Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Energy, both aimed toward improving reliability and utilization of time-series data for diagnostics and analytics. In 2019 through NERC, he coauthored a paper discussing how synchrophasor technology-based, real-time applications can help detect inter-area oscillations, which left unchecked, can potentially lead to cascading outages and power generation equipment failures. Fritch is further facilitating improved remote data gathering practices that reduce annual costs in personnel deployments.  


Stephanie Frizzo, P.E.

Stephanie Frizzo, P.E.

U.S. Department of the Air Force
316th Civil Engineer Squadron
Joint Base Andrews, Maryland

SQUADRON ENGINEER RAISES THE BAR IN STAFF LEADERSHIP, PERFORMANCE

A demonstrated leader among her peers, Frizzo steers a team exceeding 500 military and civilian personnel in providing on-demand engineering services to a $5.9 billion facility. Their domain comprises nearly 500 buildings, almost 1,100 military family homes, and 4,900 acres supporting Joint Base Andrews. Also notable, Frizzo’s unit built the Air Force’s new $316 million hangar complex, enabling the beddown of the $3.9 billion Boeing VC-25 program. Simultaneously, they replaced $150 million of taxiways connecting a dozen airfield missions. To her credit, she has led the Air Force’s most efficient facility sustainment team in labor rate accountability, all while managing manpower deficits.

Under her continued civil engineering expertise, Frizzo’s team was recently awarded three military contracts, adding to a $1 billion active construction portfolio: a hazardous cargo pad and explosive ordnance disposal range; a state-of-the art disease control center; and a K-9 kennel. The team corrected all environmental violation notices in 2023 — protecting Maryland’s waterways — and unified nearly a dozen state, federal, and private organizations to renaturalize more than 120 acres of abandoned golf course property, thereby priming environmental credits to offset a $1 billion installation development plan.  


Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Haith, P.E.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Haith, P.E.

U.S. Public Health Service
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Honolulu District

ARMY CORPS ENGINEER EXHIBITS DIVERSE EXPERIENCE IN THE WEST, PACIFIC

Matty began his service as an Army combat engineer officer with two deployments to Iraq supporting reconstruction operations. From that experience, he was selected to teach engineering with a focus on cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Matty transferred from the Army to Indian Health Service in 2016 as the Seattle District Engineer, where he supervised a team providing engineering assistance to more than 40 Native American tribes across Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

In 2020, Matty’s engineering prowess was needed at Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, where he directed in excess of $20 million in disaster recovery projects resulting from the 2018 Kilauea eruption. He then transferred to USACE in Honolulu in 2022. As another milestone, Haith served as project manager for the Army’s water treatment facilities — operating in response to the Red Hill (Oahu) fuel leak — which provide water for nearly 1,700 military families. A year later in 2023, he worked with the Corps’ temporary power response team following the Maui wildfires. In that role, he helped coordinate distribution of 1,089 kW of power across 20 key infrastructural assets.


Reyn Hashiro, P.E.

Reyn Hashiro, P.E.

U.S. Department of the Navy
Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Pacific
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii

GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEER TAKES LEAD ON KEY FOUNDATIONAL PROJECTS

Chief geotechnical engineer Hashiro addresses large-scale and complex foundational challenges for site development and infrastructural projects. His landmark missions include foundations for U.S. Marine Corps Camp Blaz; excavation and dredging for new dry docks at Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound; foundation work and dredging for the new Polaris Point Pier; and airfield pavements in Tinian, Mariana Islands; Yap, Micronesia; and Guam. As Hashiro’s leadership skills grow, his initiative in managing limited resources has enabled expeditious design and construction close-outs to fulfill his agency’s workload.

NAVFAC Pacific’s technical reliance on Hashiro is further evident through his recent deployment on contingency projects in the typhoon-damaged regions of Guam and Okinawa. There he conducted engineering assessments to restore critical military operations. Similarly, he provided key geotechnical engineering support in response to the Red Hill fuel leak in Oahu, Hawaii. Without his expertise, NAVFAC would not have been able to develop optimal plans to repair essential infrastructure. For these contributions, Hashiro was awarded the Navy Civilian Service Achievement Medal in 2023. Additionally, he has been instrumental in mentoring junior civil engineers and construction managers in handling geotechnical issues.  


Capt. Stephen Martin Jr., Ph.D., P.E.

Capt. Stephen Martin Jr., Ph.D., P.E.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Morgantown, West Virginia

CDC RESEARCHER MAKES COVID-19 MITIGATION PROTOCOLS TOP PRIORITY

Exceeding 20 years of research and field experience, Martin is a renowned specialist in ventilation, engineering controls, ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, airborne infectious disease transmission, and indoor environmental quality. Since 2020, he has focused his expertise on mitigating the global COVID-19 pandemic. Early in that mission, Martin guided federal and state entities, healthcare operations, private businesses, commercial airlines, school environments, unions, and other stakeholders in Operation Warp Speed protocols. His foremost responsibilities were providing safe ventilation to border security facilities, law enforcement operations, embassies, and U.S. military bases. His shared knowledge encompassed more than 25 presentations, 1,000 consultations, and 50 document reviews for technical content.

As senior research engineer, Martin steered the Air Cleaning Working Group in 2023 in the development of the American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers’ Standard 241: Control of Infectious Aerosols, published last July. This consensus-based enforceable standard will reduce indoor exposure to viruses and other pathogens that cause personal harm and economic damage yearly. Martin further piloted CDC’s 2023 updated ventilation guidance to prevent the continued spread of COVID-19 and prepare buildings for future diseases spread by infectious aerosols.  


Dana Moses, P.E.

Dana Moses, P.E.

U.S. Department of the Army
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Huntington, West Virginia

ARMY HYDRAULIC ENGINEER LEADS MAJOR DAM MODIFICATION PROJECTS

Lead hydraulic engineer Moses serves as principal-in-charge for design and construction of high-risk spillway modifications for the Pipestem and Bluestone dams in West Virginia. These projects, totaling $1 billion, aim to reduce the life-safety risk for a population exceeding 190,000. The Pipestem modifications deploy both cost-effective and rapid means of increasing safe spillway capacity, and the Bluestone project allows for spillway remediation within the footprint of an existing spillway. The Bluestone modifications also eliminate the adverse impact to downstream aquatic habitat, while providing for resiliency spanning a larger range of operating conditions.

Aside from providing senior agency review for 10 other dam projects, Moses conducts international training workshops in Laos and Myanmar — partnering with Canada, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. He is also leading two projects in Latin America. The first is a dam-and-tunnel structure in Panama that will provide fresh drinking water to more than four million people. The second project in Ecuador addresses spillway design in response to major erosion following the collapse of the San Rafael Waterfall, threatening a $2.25 billion hydropower facility that generates electricity for a population exceeding five million.  


Maj. Jay Pearson, P.E.

Maj. Jay Pearson, P.E.

U.S. Department of the Air Force
Pacific Air Forces
Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea

FLIGHT COMMANDER DIRECTS OPERATIONS TOWARD AIR BASE UPGRADING

The engineering experience of Pearson spans the realms of design, research, development, and management. In research alone, he has advanced the growth of sustainable power solutions for isolated air bases. Embracing that calling, he proposed a microgrid solution by integrating annual weather data and optimizing renewable energy sources and fuel consumption. Pearson’s proposition could potentially reduce fuel demand at isolated air bases by more than 90 percent. As engineering flight commander, he directed a $785 million design and construction project portfolio and guided the close-out of a major command priority — a $19 million air base infrastructural project replacing 2,183 slabs on Kunsan’s only runway.

Also noteworthy, Pearson conducted multiple design reviews for the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The $702 million infrastructural modernization program is key to maintaining a strong nuclear deterrence. While deployed, he led a 24-member team to deconstruct and reconstitute a dozen aircraft maintenance shelters in support of the Afghanistan retrograde, completing operations a week ahead of schedule. Aside from saving $2.2 million in infrastructure, the mission facilitated development of interim quarters for 55,000 noncombatant Afghan evacuees.  


Maj. Christopher Wittman, P.E.

Maj. Christopher Wittman, P.E.

U.S. Department of the Air Force
Space Systems Command
Vandenberg Space Force Base, California

AIR FORCE OFFICER ADVOCATES FOR FACILITIES, DEFENSE MODERNIZATION

As operations flight commander, Wittman manages $11 billion in infrastructure supporting annual space launches and critical defense test activities. He oversees more than 300 military members and civilians to operate, maintain, and repair the third largest Air Force installation. Moreover, Wittman serves as beddown engineer for the Boeing MH-139 helicopter, which is replacing the aging Bell UH-1N Huey. He conducted numerous design reviews and coordinated team activities to proceed ahead of schedule on a $430 million facility infrastructural program to house the MH-139 in cold weather climates of the most northern continental United States.

Additionally, Wittman screened and advocated for nearly 340 projects valued in excess of $1.5 billion to safeguard $24 billion in nuclear-capable real property across nine installations. And to mitigate foreign nuclear threats, he helped to expediently advance the largest American nuclear modernization effort seen in decades. This includes the on-boarding of the $89 billion Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program to replace an existing 60-year-old weapons system. Further using his diverse engineering expertise, Wittman resolved $2 billion of military construction projects, with $11 billion slated in new mission construction requirements spanning six directorates.


2024 NSPE Federal Engineer of the Year Award Agency Winners

Read the press release.

*FEYA Top Ten

  • Nathan W. Anderson, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Interior
    National Park Service
  • *LCDR Timothy R. Dahms, P.E.
    U.S Department of the Navy
    Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command
  • L. Andrew Deichert, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Agriculture
    Natural Resources Conservation Service
  • Ian C. Doiron, P.E., SE
    U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
    Office of Construction & Facilities Management
  • William R. Earl, P.E., SE
    General Services Administration
    Public Buildings Service
  • *CDR Christopher T. Fehrman, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    Indian Health Service
  • *Timothy N. Fritch, P.E.
    Tennessee Valley Authority
  • *Stephanie R. Frizzo, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Air Force
    316th Civil Engineer Squadron
  • *LCDR Matthew C. Haith, P.E.
    U.S. Public Health Service
    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District
  • *Reyn S. Hashiro, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Navy
    NAVFAC Pacific
  • Elizabeth Hilton, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Transportation
    Federal Highway Administration
  • MAJ Patrick J. Lavin, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Army
    U.S. Army Europe and Africa
  • Chelsea M. Linwood, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Air Force
    802 Civil Engineer Squadron
  • Christian P. Lupo
    National Aeronautics and Space Administration
    Johnson Space Center
  • *CAPT Stephen B. Martin, Jr., Ph.D., P.E.
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
  • *Dana W. Moses, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Army
    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
  • Joseph Alex Musa, M.S., M.Eng, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    National Institutes of Health
  • *MAJ Jay F. Pearson, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Air Force
    Pacific Air Forces
  • Christopher James Quatroche, P.E.
    U.S. Department of the Navy
    Naval Sea Systems Command
  • LT Lexie Royster, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Homeland Security
    U.S. Coast Guard
  • Caleb Rudkin, P.E.
    U.S. Department of Interior
    Bureau of Reclamation
  • Cayetano Santos
    U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
  • CDR Samantha Spindel, Ph.D.
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response
  • LCDR Geng Tian, Ph.D.
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    U.S. Food and Drug Administration
  • *MAJ Christopher E. Wittman, P.E., PMP
    U.S. Department of the Air Force
    Space Systems Command
  • Changfu Wu
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
    U.S. Food and Drug Administration

2024 NSPE Federal Engineer of the Year

The Federal Engineer of the Year Award, sponsored by the Professional Engineers in Government, honors engineers employed by a federal agency that employs at least 50 engineers worldwide.

Federal Engineer of the Year Award Ceremony

February 23, 2024
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. (E.S.T.)
National Press Club
529 14th Street, NW
13th Floor
Washington, D.C., 20045


Highlights from the 2023 Federal Engineer of the Year

Past FEYA Winners and Events