Patricia “Pat” Galloway, who pioneered megaproject management and arbitration as well as the first woman to serve as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, died Sept. 26 after a cancer diagnosis , according to his company, Pegasus-. Global Holdings Inc. He was 67 years old.
A licensed professional engineer and certified project management professional, Galloway served as CEO of The Nielsen-Wurster Group Inc. when she was elected president of ASCE in 2003. She served in that position until 2004.
“Achieving this achievement allowed me to pave the way and break that glass ceiling, serving as a role model for both girls and women to be whatever they want to be and knowing that they can achieve anything they set their mind to” , Galloway wrote. EngineerGirl.org, a National Academy of Engineering website dedicated to inspiring girls to enter engineering careers.
Maria Lehman, past president of ASCE, head of US infrastructure at GHD and vice chair of the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council, calls Galloway a friend and mentor who “left an impact on so many of us.”
“In the 20 years since Pat flew through the roof, it wasn’t a breakout, she exploded through the roof, we’ve had eight women presidents of ASCE,” says Lehman.
As president of the society, Galloway brought big ideas and ensured the organization had a global presence, says Tom Smith, executive director.
“He was always someone who thought big, not only [about] the large and complex projects he worked on around the world, but his vision and plans for the profession and for ASCE,” he says.
Courtesy of the National Construction AcademyGalloway helped manage major projects and mediate disputes that arose over them in her roles as president and former CEO of Cle Elum, Washington-based consulting firm Pegasus-Global Holdings. and as chairman of the dispute resolution firm Galloway Arbitration. He also served on the board of Stantec and Granite Construction.
“The board will not be the same without her,” Granite CEO and President Kyle Larkin said in a statement.
Galloway worked on a wide variety of major projects during his career, including the Venice, Italy flood protection project; the London Crossrail; Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge; CityLink freeway project in Melbourne, Australia, and dozens of power stations.
“She was a very smart engineer, especially strong on cost and schedule,” says John Borcherding, who worked with Galloway on the electric generating station of the South Texas Project, a nuclear plant near the Gulf Coast.
Galloway also served a term as a member and vice chair of the National Science Board after being appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2006, and previously served on the American Arbitration Association’s board and board of directors from SCANA Corp. He wrote a book published by ASCE in 2008, “The 21st-Century Engineer: A Proposal for Engineering Education Reform,” and co-edited another published in 2012, “Managing Gigaprojects: Advice From Those Who’ve Been There, Done That “.
The books reflect Galloway’s commitment to education, Smith says. After Galloway earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University and began working, he later earned an MBA from the New York Institute of Technology. In the early 2000s, he returned to school at Kochi University of Technology in Japan to earn a PhD in infrastructure systems engineering.
Galloway was joined in Kochi by her first husband, Kris Nielsen, who died of cancer in 2013. The couple also went into business together, first at the Nielsen-Wurster Group and later at Pegasus after selling the former to Marsh . Lehman says Galloway and Nielsen were big believers in diversity in business and civil engineering.
“They walked the talk,” Lehman says. “Nielsen-Wurster probably had more women and minorities than older white guys, which, in the ’90s, was a big hit.”
Galloway was also an early adopter of risk assessment, developing risk management plans and implementing project controls in the 1990s, and his colleagues say his work affected how people thought about projects and delivery of projects. Her experience made her sought after for projects around the world and for such works as the reconstruction of Utah’s Interstate 15 before the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, which was one of the first major projects of construction design in the USA.
“They were doing risk management on megaprojects before we knew what megaprojects were,” says Lehman.
Colleagues also remember Galloway’s fun-loving personality. She sometimes hosted ASCE district meetings at a winery she and Nielsen started in New Jersey, and was known for her dedication to dressing for a theme. Smith says he “made ASCE work fun.”
“She just lit up a room when she walked in and was one of those larger-than-life personalities,” says George “Edd” Gibson, president and CEO of the National Academy of Construction, who was inducted into the group with Galloway. in 2005. “He was a role model, and was always dedicated to improving our industry.”
Galloway also had his own role models. She wrote and acted in a one-woman play about Emily Roebling, who took over the management of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband, Washington Roebling, became ill from working on the caissons on the docks of the bridge Galloway had been scheduled to resurrect the play for the ASCE convention in Tampa, Florida, this month.
Now, Lehman will play it as a tribute.
“She was always ahead of her time and always a trailblazer in our industry for women,” says Lehman. “I’ve lost a piece of my heart.”
No details of the tribute were available at the time the story was published.
