Midland highway engineer wins top honor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE; October 11, 2005

Doug Eichorst received TxDOt's Gibb Gilchrist award at annual event

COLLEGE STATION – Doug Eichorst, the Texas Department of Transportation engineer who oversees construction and maintenance in Andrews, Martin, Midland and Upton Counties, was given the Gibb Gilchrist Award –one of TxDOT’s top honors– earlier today at the highway department’s annual transportation conference on the Texas A&M campus.

Eichorst, who has been the Midland Area Engineer since December 1998, was singled out as one of TxDOT’s top engineers and praised for several historic firsts in the Odessa District –including rebuilding the Business 158 [Andrews Highway] at night and placing concrete intersections along Loop 250.

"Doug has always stepped up to the plate wherever and whenever he is needed," Lauren Garduño, the Odessa District Engineer, said afterward. "His engineering expertise, his imagination, and his enthusiasm set a great example for other employees in the district. He is an engineer’s engineer."

The Gibb Gilchrist Award, which was established in 1996, honors the skills, dedication, and civic-mindedness of department engineers who work in planning, transportation, design, construction, maintenance, bridges, materials and research, and traffic.

"The Andrews Highway project is a great example of how Doug goes the extra mile," said Garduño. "He turned what might have been a nightmare into one of the most user-friendly road projects ever built in the district.

"The only construction evidence noticed by daytime commuters on Andrews Highway was an occasional bump, a few orange barrels along the curb, and signs saying ‘Road Work Ahead’.

"And when it was time to rebuild key business intersections along Loop 250," said Garduño, "Doug looked years down the road and use concrete at the intersections and approaches to build for a 30-year life cycle instead of the typical 10-year life cycle of asphalt."

As a young engineer-in-training in the Abilene District, Eichorst grabbed hold of a kick-start career opportunity –a complex interchange project at Loop 322 and US Highway 84 in Abilene. He took the project from ‘drawings on a napkin’ through the entire design process --including purchasing right of way, adjusting utilities, schematics, plans, specifications and estimates, and finally to the construction phase.

Eichorst is always quick to give credit where credit is due.

"I was fortunate to be assigned this project at a time when there were a number of very experienced people who always took time to point me in the right direction," Eichorst said. "These people were the backbone of the department –people who never got enough recognition for their many years of service, hard work and dedication; people like Harold Thompson, Joe Derrick, John David Chapman, Wally Milner, and Robert Elkins."

Eichorst supervises five offices in a four-county West Texas area [Andrews, Martin, Midland and Upton counties], and oversees construction and maintenance on 2,463.9 lane miles of highway, including 60 miles of Interstate.

In presenting the award, Herb Richardson, a former Texas A&M Chancellor and current director of the Texas Transportation Institute, said that Eichorst has built a reputation for consensus-building.

"Whether it is meeting with business owners or homeowners one-on-one or talking to residents at a public meeting, ," said Richardson, "he involves entire towns in the design and construction process."

Eichorst and his wife, Karen, have four children: Trey, Dirk, Kaelee, Kelly.

For more information: contact Glen Larum, Texas Department of Transportation, at (432) 498-4746.