David L. Richter has joined BE&K Building Group as CEO based in Raleigh, North Carolina. A board member of its parent company Pernix Group, he had held a senior position at engineering firm Atwell LLC and is the former CEO of global construction management firm Hill International. Frank HolleyCEO of BE&K since 2019, becomes president.
Consulting Engineer BGE Inc. has promoted Michael Fitzgeralda 22-year company veteran, to Houston’s regional leader. Chris Kuykendallwho has spent 31 years with the firm and helped build its transportation practice, has been named regional leader for North Texas and Jeff Safe was named Houston’s general manager of land development. The company said the changes are part of its long-term succession strategy.
The consultancy Halff has promoted Leigh Hollis to people’s heads Based in Richardson, Texas, she joined the company in 2005 and served as senior vice president overseeing operations based in Dallas, Frisco and Richardson. Hollis leads Halff’s HR function. Ben Pylant continues as the company’s director of growth.
FYLD has appointed Sonam Kala vice president of strategy and growth. Based in Houston, he helps lead the firm’s work in the US infrastructure and utilities markets. Kala joins from AI-powered fieldwork technology company Urbint, where she served as vice president of strategy.
Tim Nelson has been elevated to executive vice president of operations at Austin-based energy developer RWE Americas. Continue to lead safety, security and environmental functions; asset management; and engineering teams. The company is the North American center of RWE Group, Essen, Germany.
Caddell Construction promotion Ike Keene to the Senior Vice President Commercial, Nathan Raycroft to the senior vice president of government and Brian Rogers to the construction executive. The Montgomery, Ala., contractor also hired Tom Csicsila as a commercial vice president in Atlanta. He had been vice president of Baldwin & Shell Construction Co.
Thomas W. “Tom” Ventulett III90, a co-founder, partner and principal design director of Atlanta firm TVS Architecture & Interiors, which built a leading U.S. firm, died Aug. 24, the firm said in a social media post. “His care for Atlanta was profound … and shaped some of the places where this city has come together, including the Georgia World Congress Center, the CNN Center, the Omni and the Georgia Dome,” the TVS post said.
An architecture graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1958, he co-founded Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates 10 years later with colleagues William P. Thompson and Raymond F. Stainback Jr. The firm’s influence extended nationally to the design of convention centers and other places of public assembly.
TVS is ranked 92nd in the architectural register’s top 300 architecture firms by 2026, with revenue of $69 million last year. Ventulett retired from his position in 2015, but continued as chairman emeritus of the board. “He created a place where generations of talented people could … contribute to the company’s work in their own way,” the firm’s tribute said.
Ventulett also supported his alma mater, endowing a Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design in 2001 through an undisclosed amount of family and corporate funds. It is the first endowed chair in architecture in Georgia. He also served as board leader from 2009 to 2023 for the Georgia Tech nonprofit TUFF that funded and helped build education and research facilities there and at other schools in Georgia and beyond. During Ventulett’s board tenure, TUFF noted about $2 billion in funded projects.
