Ohio Engineer Honored for Distinguished Service to the Profession

The PEI Distinguished Service Award is presented to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution of national scope to advance the causes of the individual engineer in industry or of professional engineers in industry. Eminence in the field of engineering does not have to be limited to that of technical contributions only, but also to the profession itself.

Heyeck retired June 2013 as Senior Vice President of Transmission for American Electric Power. He was responsible for AEP's 11-state transmission system, including officer and board positions for several AEP affiliates. He also held leadership positions in AEP's Corporate Planning and Budgeting Department. He joined AEP in June 1976. Heyeck founded The Grid Group LLC in 2013 to provide strategic services for executives in the electric utility industry, tapping his 37 years of service to the industry.

Heyeck served the industry in numerous capacities, including as a member of the U.S. Department of Energy's Electricity Advisory Committee, president of the International Council on Large Electric Systems' U.S. National Committee, chairman of the Electric Power Research Institute's Power Delivery and Utilization Council, and board member for the Reliability First Corporation, a regional entity of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a master's in business administration at the University of Dayton. He is also a graduate of The Executive Program at the University of Virginia's Darden School. He is a registered professional engineer in Ohio and a senior member of IEEE.

Heyeck holds elected office in Ohio as a Westerville City Council Member since 1993, and he has also served as chairman (2001–03, 2009–13) and mayor (2003–05). He has served in several community board capacities.