Twenty Years at the Top: Black Engineers of the Year

Chapter 19 William D. Smith, P.E. 2005 Black Engineer of the Year THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE 2005 BLACK ENGINEER OF THE YEAR AWARDS CEREMONY SPEECHES HONORING WILLIAM D. SMITH, P.E. THE THEME OF THE CONFERENCE THAT YEAR WAS “SEIZE THE EXCELLENCE IMPERATIVE.” The Honorable Rodney Slater, former secretary of United States Department of Transportation and partner with Patton Boggs LLP: It is truly an honor for me to be here tonight to introduce you to my friend Bill Smith. It is a double honor to do so while presenting him with the top award that is connected to the word “excellence.” For that is precisely how I see Bill’s career. Allow me to offer just a few highlights.

Bill’s road to excellence began at North Carolina A&T State University, one of the registered Historically Black Colleges and Universities, training to become an electrical engineer, an ROTC Air Force officer, and interning at IBM. Upon graduation and redeeming his military obligation, Bill apprenticed at firms like Kaiser Aluminum and Bechtel Corporation in a variety of diverse assignments: mining projects in Indonesia; copper refining in the American Southwest; iron mining in Brazil, ore crushing in Chile; and rock quarry operations in California. It seems that from the start, Bill’s climb up to the top began by digging down to the bottom of things. He was identified for leadership early on, and appointed to the Directors’ Advisory Group at Bechtel Corp., a select group of senior manager candidates who advised top executives on strategic issues. In leadership positions around the world, Bill was often the first Black American engineer some of his overseas mining colleagues ever saw. But, he mastered their language and culture to motivate them in their language.

Bill came to Parsons Brinckerhoff in 1988 as chief engineer of the FMC Power Group. The CEO of PB became his mentor and helped him to lay out the path to the executive team. His projects 131