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Meet Connie Crawford!
Connie Crawford
Senior Vice President, Global Practice Leader for Rail and Transit
Louis Berger, Morristown, NJ
Chair, APTA Capital Projects Subcommittee; member, Rail Conference Planning and Annual Meeting Planning subcommittees
Please describe your organization’s scope.
 Louis Berger is a $1 billion global professional services firm involved in transportation, water, energy, facilities, operations and maintenance, and economic and institutional development. We have 6,000 employees deployed in more than 50 countries. We are an Engineering News-Record top-20 ranked firm, and are consistently rated in the top 10 ENR list for transportation.
How long have you worked in the public transportation industry?
I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years.
What drew you to a career in public transportation?
I began my career as a long-span bridge engineer. In the mid-1990s, I was responsible for adding railroad to the Tagus River suspension bridge in Lisbon, Portugal, and for replacing the subway line across the Williamsburg suspension bridge in New York. Those two projects gave me an appreciation for the challenges and rewards of working in public transportation. Following my experience on the Williamsburg Bridge, I joined MTA New York City Transit in 2001 and served as senior vice president and chief engineer through 2009.
How long have you been an APTA member?
I attended my first Annual Meeting in 1999.
Describe your involvement with APTA.
I am currently serving in my second term as chair of the Capital Projects Subcommittee. I have helped with conference planning and participated as a speaker or moderator at a number of rail conferences and Annual Meetings. I have more recently gotten involved with the Business Member Board of Governors and look forward to continuing with that.
What have you found to be the most valuable APTA benefit or resource?
APTA is a great way to get to know people in all aspects of public transportation. The conferences draw people throughout the industry—governance, planning, finance, design, construction, and operations—and function as thought centers. I find I leave conferences with leads and connections that fuel my activities for the months to follow.
APTA staff are welcoming to new people and new ideas, and they are open and flexible in shaping the content of conferences to suit the interests of the membership and the needs of the industry.
What do you like most about your job?
I recently shifted to the new role of global practice leader for rail and transit. The position involves traveling to projects and prospective opportunities all over the world. It is fascinating to see both similarities and differences in how projects are implemented in different countries and environments.
We are involved in mega projects in the Middle East where the scope and scale are extraordinary, such as Doha Metro, Riyadh Metro, and Saudi North-South Rail. New transit systems costing $10 billion to $30 billion are being designed and constructed in less than 10 years. These amazing projects draw exceptional talent from around the world, and I very much enjoy meeting and mixing with them.
Innovative P3 metro projects, such as in Hyderabad and Mumbai, offer investors long concession agreements and developable property adjacent to the alignment to finance the works. Large developed cities are finding ways to shoehorn in new metro and BRT systems, and they are coming up with creative ways to ensure that people use them, even in hot climates that in the past have not been pedestrian-friendly.
In the U.S. we are involved in several privately funded rail initiatives; executed properly, and following successful models from abroad, they could be the way of the future here.
What is unique about your organization? What would readers be surprised to learn?
Unlike most U.S. consulting firms, Louis Berger has always been predominantly an overseas firm. When Dr. Louis Berger, a geotechnical engineer and professor, founded the company 60 years ago, he immediately went abroad, with the famed Road to Mandalay being one of his first projects.
Today, international work fluctuates between 40 percent to 60 percent of Louis Berger revenues, although we are seeing an increased swing back toward international due to the extensive amount of new design and construction in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Our international base continues to permeate the culture of the firm: We work and excel in places that many firms fear to tread, we adapt to client needs, and we celebrate entrepreneurial spirit.
People may also be surprised to learn that affiliate firms under the Louis Berger umbrella include Ammann & Whitney, BergerABAM, Klohn Crippen Berger, and Chelbi, which was founded more than 30 years ago in China.
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