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FRED W. WRIGHT JR.New position: Department head, St. Petersburg operations, Southeast division, Greenhorne & O'Mara, St. Petersburg. Previous position: Project director, Greenhorne & O'Mara, St. Petersburg
As a design engineer, Bradley Foran likes to look at the changes he helped make on roads in his hometown.
Foran oversees a 10-person department at the St. Petersburg offices of Greenhorne & O'Mara, a full-service engineering consulting company with 20 offices in Florida and six other East Coast states. The St. Petersburg native's responsibilities range from overseeing day-to-day operations to researching and acquiring new clients.
"We do primarily highway design," Foran said, which includes designing traffic flow, roadways, signals, signage and markings and drainage. The majority of Greenhorne & O'Mara's contracts in the St. Petersburg office are $2-million or less, Foran said.
Clients include private industry as well as local, state and federal government transportation agencies. Most of Greenhorne & O'Mara's clients are in the Florida Department of Transportation's District 7, which includes the Tampa Bay area.
"My job is primarily providing a service in the engineering industry," Foran said. "Customer service and customer satisfaction: I want to do that better than anyone else."
Foran attended Florida Southern College in Lakeland and the University of Florida, where he earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1993.
He first worked as a civil engineer for three years with the city of Cape Coral, then joined PH&A in Fort Myers in 1996 as a project engineer. A year later, he went to work for Cumbey & Fair in Clearwater, then joined Greenhorne & O'Mara in March.
"The thing I find the most interesting about (this) discipline is that you get to see the physical changes (when) your design is implemented and constructed," Foran said. "It's a longer process (but) you get to see them build what you design."
Foran said he doesn't hesitate to point out to friends and family a particular job he helped create. "If I happen to be driving by a job I did, I'll tell people I worked on this job or that job," he said.
"Overall, I find the profession to have a very high standard," he said. "There are a lot of good people who work in our profession, especially at the level I'm at. There are high moral standards, high ethical standards.
"We're not out there trying to make $1-million a year," he said. "Most of us are just trying to make a good living and have a positive impact on the community and give something back."
Foran is on the transportation committee for the Hillsborough County chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the board of directors of the Pinellas County Science Center.
Foran, 35, and his wife, Renee, have three teenage daughters. The household is "very hormonally imbalanced at all times," he joked.
Foran said he and his wife occasionally participate in local 5K and 10K runs.