American Road & Transportation Builders Association President & CEO Pete Ruane has been named the 2012 recipient of the Road Gang’s P.D. McLean Memorial Award. Established in 1962 in memory of one of the Road Gang’s founders and its first chairman, it annually honors an individual “for a distinct contribution to the cause of better highway transportation in the public interest.” The award was presented April 26 during a Road Gang lunch in the Nation’s Capital.
Past recipients hail from private sector transportation organizations, and from the public sector including Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), and Mary Peters and Rodney Slater, who were recognized during their service as Federal Highway Administrators.
“While it is a great honor to receive this recognition, I accept the award on behalf of all of ARTBA’s volunteer leaders and staff whose work has been critical to the industry’s success in growing the transportation construction market over the last twenty five years,” Ruane said.
Ruane has more than 40 years of diversified experience in the economic development, construction, transportation and national defense fields. He has played an active leadership role in every federal surface transportation program authorization since 1980.
Since its formation in 1996, Ruane has co-chaired the Transportation Construction Coalition, a permanent 30 member, market-oriented construction trade association and labor coalition working on industry legislative and regulatory issues.
He’s a trustee of the ARTBA Transportation Development Foundation and is the vice chairman of the U.S. Chamber-led Americans for Transportation Mobility (ATM), a broad-based coalition focused on major national transportation legislation. He’s also a member of the Chamber’s “Committee of 100” top national association executives.
Ruane is the first association executive to have been awarded the American Public Works Association Distinguished Service Award (1999) and was voted one of Engineering News-Record magazine’s top newsmakers in 1998 for his work on the federal surface transportation program reauthorization (TEA-21). Both of these awards were for his unique personal leadership in the passage of TEA-21, then the largest public works legislation in U.S. history.
