It’s time to hug an engineer as the Fort Worth and Mid-Cities chapters of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers (TSPE) name top engineers to honor in 2018.
Engineers Week, or EWeek, was created by the National Society of Professional Engineers as the signature program of the National Engineers Week Foundation, a coalition of more than 70 engineering, professional and technical societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies.
EWeek is designed to raise public awareness and appreciation of the engineering profession and engineers’ contributions to society. This year EWeek is Feb. 18-24.
The local award winners will be honored Feb. 23 at the annual EWeek Banquet from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History,1600 Gendy St., Fort Worth.
Business leader Tim Wackel will be the keynote speaker.
TSPE event organizers say that Wackel is one of today’s most popular business speakers, able to make information entertaining, memorable and easy to understand.
Wackel combines more than 25 years of sales leadership with specific client research to deliver programs that go beyond today’s best practices, they said.
Wackel’s client list includes Allstate, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Philips Medical, Toshiba, Wells Fargo, Raytheon and many professional and trade associations.
Each year the TSPE chapters select engineers for special recognition in several categories.
Fort Worth Chapter Engineer of the Year
James P. Amick, PE, Neel-Schaffer Inc.
James P. “Jim” Amick is the engineer manager for Neel-Schaffer Inc.’s Fort Worth office. He is a civil engineer, client manager, project manager and stockholder.
Amick graduated from Western Hills High School in Fort Worth and Texas Tech University.
During his career, Amick has managed hundreds of projects, including roadways, drainage, water, sewer, parks, airports and buildings.
Lately he has been working with many governmental entities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He has presented and been published at numerous state, national and international conferences, generally focusing on drainage topics, a specialty area for him.
Amick has been active in the National Society of Professional Engineers since the late 1980s and has held many positions in the Fort Worth chapter, including president in 1997-1998. He was recognized as Young Engineer of the Year in 1995. He has also held positions in both the state and national organization.
Amick has been active in both the American Society of Civil Engineers (Fort Worth branch president in 2000-2001) and the American Public Works Association (North Central Texas branch president in 2008). He was named Branch Member of the Year in 2003 and 2010 and received the Texas Chapter Bill Hogge Award for Outstanding Chapter Achievement and Excellence in Chapter Service in 2009.
Amick also was secretary of the Benbrook Economic Development Corp. from 2003 to 2007 and was on the Benbrook citizens committees for the city’s 2003 and 2009 capital improvement programs. He also served on the Fort Worth Pavement Design Standards Committee.
Amick likes Scuba diving at the recreational and technical levels and is a PADI master instructor. He also competes in the United States Masters Swimming program, where he is nationally ranked in the Top 10 list of competitors.
Mid-Cities Chapter Engineer of the Year
Tylor Bottorff, PE, Hayden Consultants Inc.
Like a lot of people around here, Tylor Bottorff is a refugee from the cold.
He grew up in rural Wahoo, Nebraska, and graduated from Iowa State University in 2003 with a construction engineering degree.
Bottorff started his career with Kiewit Companies, working on heavy highway construction projects throughout the Midwest. After receiving his professional engineering license in 2007, he shifted to civil design and ran a branch office for JEO Consulting Group in central Nebraska.
But warmer weather beckoned and the Bottorff family moved to Texas seven years ago, where he combined his past experience to become a subsurface utility engineering (SUE) leader. He says his greatest engineering achievement was starting a SUE Department with Hayden Consultants.
Bottorff has been involved with the National Society of Professional Engineers since 2007 and held positions in the Texas Society of Professional Engineers Mid-Cities Chapter from director through vice president.
He says that serving on the board and volunteering for TSPE events has been one of the greatest benefits both personally and professionally in his career.
Bottorff is married to his high school sweetheart, Brandi, and they have three children, Caden 14, McKenzie 11, and Samuel 6.
He has now joined his wife full time in their personal business “providing a hair care revolution,” he says, throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Bottorff says being named Engineer of the Year tops off his engineering career.
Fort Worth–Young Engineer of the Year
Holly Ahumada, PE, Halff Associates Inc.
The Young Engineer of the Year Award is presented by the Fort Worth Chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers to individuals younger than 34 who exhibit outstanding technical ability, have made great professional achievements and continually support civic and humanitarian activities for their community.
The award this year goes to Holly Ahumada.
She was born in Clear Lake and grew up in Austin, where she graduated from Bowie High School in 2009. She majored in civil engineering at Texas A&M University. In 2013, she completed a master’s degree in engineering focused in water resources from A&M.
While at A&M, Ahumada held leadership positions with Alpha Phi Omega. In 2012, she received the Margret Rudder Community Service Award.
Ahumada has been a civil engineer at Halff Associates Inc. for four years, working on storm water projects around the state.
She has been a member of Vision FW, the Texas Floodplain Management Association and the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, where she has been active in organizing the Fort Worth chapter’s MathCounts event.
Ahumada has been married to her husband, Ian, for a year and a half. They enjoy attending all the Aggie football home games and traveling.
Fort Worth branch, American Society of Civil Engineers
Young Engineer of the Year
Johnathan Zimmerer, PE, North Tarrant Infrastructure
Johnathan Zimmerer has been named the 2018 Edmund Friedman Young Engineer of the Year by the Fort Worth branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). This award recognizes younger members of ASCE for their contributions to the public welfare of the civil engineering profession.
Zimmerer holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Tennessee Technological University and is licensed in Texas as a professional engineer. He has seven years of roadway and drainage design experience.
As project engineer for North Tarrant Infrastructure in the Construction Technical Office, he resolves road and drainage issues on Interstate 35W. Previously, Zimmerer worked for five years at TranSystems and one year at Volkert doing road and drainage design. His experience includes many Fort Worth city projects, TEXRail, U.S. Highway 75 in Plano and U.S. Highway 27 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Zimmerer has been involved in ASCE since college and is active in the Fort Worth branch, serving as the hospitality chairman for two years and currently as the Younger Member chairman.
Zimmerer was born in Lindsay, near Gainesville. During high school, he was the 4-H Gold Star recipient and became an Eagle Scout. He went to Tennessee Tech on a rifle scholarship.
Away from work, Zimmerer spends time with his new wife, Lisa. They were married in October 2017. They are both members of the Texas-Kickball league and enjoy biking the Trinity Trails as well as sampling a cold brew on patios around Fort Worth.
2018 Richard Van Trump Award Winner
Jacob Hays, PE, Halff Associates Inc.
The Fort Worth Chapter of the National Society of Professional Engineers Texas Branch established the Richard Van Trump Award in 1971 to recognize a member or members for service to the chapter during the previous year and to honor the late Richard Van Trump, PE.
The chapter’s past president selects the recipient(s) ¬ – this year, Jacob Hays – to recognize those he finds most helpful and deserving in service to the chapter during the past president’s year in office.
Hays was born in Elgin and later moved to Amarillo, where he attended Amarillo High School. After high school, he studied civil engineering at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He graduated in 2012 and joined Halff Associates Inc.’s Fort Worth office.
He received his professional engineer license in the spring of 2017 and now is a design engineer and project manager on a public works team.
Hays’s involvement in TSPE began shortly after starting at Halff Associates, when he was invited to a monthly meeting by coworkers during his first week on the job. Hays has been chapter treasurer for two years, was on the scholarship committee in 2015, 2017 and 2018, has been a MathCounts volunteer since 2013 and was a Future City volunteer in 2014.
His hobbies include hunting, fishing, mountain biking, softball, golf and an array of other outdoor activities.