DFI Trustee David Paul, P.E., Paul GeoTek Engineering, was awarded the United States Society on Dams (USSD) 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award at a special event in April. The award honors an individual whose lifetime of dedication and achievement has contributed significantly to the dam engineering profession through their leadership, inspiration and technical contributions.
“DFI is thrilled to see Dave be recognized with this award,” says Theresa Engler, DFI executive director. “DFI and the entire deep foundations industry have benefitted from Dave’s leadership in improving the design and construction of dams and advancing dam safety.”
Paul retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) at the end of 2018 after 42 years of federal service. He has more than 47 years of experience working on critical infrastructure design, dam design, levee design, construction engineering, engineering risk assessments, and dam and levee safety modifications. Has been involved in the design and construction of 11 new major dams and over 75 major dam modifications. His last position was as the dam safety officer for the Mosul Dam Task Force, which provided technical assistance to the government of Iraq to mitigate dam safety issues. He also served as special assistant for dam safety at the USACE headquarters in Washington, D.C., responsible for managing its portfolio of 715 dams.
Paul is an active member of DFI and served as the 2020-2021 DFI Traveling Lecturer. He also served as chair of DFI’s Seepage Control Working Group from inception in 2015 through 2017 and was instrumental in a memo of understanding between DFI and USACE to cooperate on improving the quality and safety of dams, levees and coastal area construction while lowering risk and cost. Additionally, Paul served as chair of the USSD Committee on Construction & Rehabilitation and as the USSD representative to ICOLD Embankment Dams Committee.
Paul is also the conference co-chair for DFI’s 49th Annual Conference on Deep Foundations being held October 7-10, 2024, in Aurora, Colorado. The theme of the conference is Water — Resiliency — Infrastructure.