Engineering Excellence Leadership Award

ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE LEADERSHIP AWARD

The CEI board formally recognized Paul J Wiedefeld as the recipient of the 2020 Engineering Excellence and Leadership Award. Paul’s achievements at the helm of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, his leadership roles at Baltimore Washington International Airport, Maryland Transit Administration and in the private sectors, and his contributions to the field of engineering guided the board in the selection.

After 35 years in the transportation industry, Paul accepted the challenging assignment of leading the Metro in 2015 as general manager/CEO. Under his direction, Metro has turned the corner on safety, service reliability and financial management; rail ridership has begun to increase after a lengthy decline; and, for the first time in the authority’s history, Metro secured dedicated capital funding from local, state, and federal governments.

This progress was made possible through a series of hard choices to put safety first. In 2016, Paul launched SafeTrack, an aggressive maintenance program that achieved three years of critical track work in just over a year. Following SafeTrack, Metro transitioned to its first-ever preventive maintenance program with longer work hours to improve safety and service reliability for customers. And in 2019, with dedicated revenue bolstering the capital program, Metro started the multi-year Platform Improvement Project to repair crumbling platforms and modernize 20 of Metro’s oldest outdoor stations.

Through his Back2Good program, Metrorail is delivering nine out of every 10 customers to their destinations on time. Customer satisfaction has reached the highest levels in recent years, and the Metro has received a clean, on-time financial audit for four consecutive years. Paul has focused on improving the customer experience, introducing new customer amenities, such as the Rush Hour Promise—the first service guarantee of its kind in the transit industry. As Paul continues working to make Metro the transit provider of choice in the Washington, D.C., he is also focused on becoming an employer of choice in the region. g

CEIE +CEI2021

SID AND REVA DEWBERRY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING

+ CIVIL ENGINEERING INSTITUTE

George Mason University Nguyen Engineering Building, Suite 1300 4400 University Drive, MS 6C1 Fairfax, Virginia 22030

703-993-1675 ceie@gmu.edu civil.gmu.edu