ASCE OC President's Column: Annual Awards Night 2025
- Nestor Godinez, PE
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 15 hours ago
The marquee event for ASCE Orange County is our Annual Awards Night, where we gather together as a profession to honor and recognize the outstanding individuals and projects in Orange County from the past 12 months. The 2025 Awards Night was held on Thursday, May 22nd, at The Colony House in Anaheim. This year’s theme was Greek Mythology, and our event’s MC, Past President Roger Chung, donned a Greek god costume to add to the festive nature of the event.
This year, 11 individuals were honored for their service to the civil engineering profession, the community, and ASCE Orange County. The highlight individual award was the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Gregory Silver. Gregory is the Principal Engineer and Director of Engineering at GMU Engineers and Geologists. He was recognized for significant contributions to the advancement of geotechnical engineering over a distinguished 37-year career. He played a pivotal role in helping to lead GMU from a 10-person geotechnical firm to a multi-disciplined engineering and geology firm.
This year, 14 projects were honored, which were completed within Orange County during the last 12 months. The awarded projects highlighted several disciplines of civil engineering and several types of infrastructure. The Project of the Year was awarded to the Bastanchury Road Widening Project, owned by the City of Yorba Linda. This important 1.5-mile infrastructure project along a key segment of Bastanchury Road, between Casa Loma Avenue and Eureka Avenue, transformed a two-lane roadway into a more efficient four-lane thoroughfare with new traffic signals at key intersections. The project demonstrated Yorba Linda’s commitment to providing multi-modal accessibility and connectivity within the community, linking key points of interest to this corridor. The project implemented Class II bicycle lanes on both sides, the pedestrian sidewalk on the north side, and an enhanced multi-purpose earthen trail on the south side. Overall, this project is a model for future development and shows how strategic infrastructure enhancements can work together to create better communities.
If there is a standout project that you are a team member of slated to be completed in the next 12 years or an outstanding civil engineer in your company, please remember to send in your submission for the 2026 Awards Night!
About the Author:
Nestor Godinez is a Senior Engineer at SLR International Corporation. He is currently the ASCE OC Branch President. Nestor can be contacted via email at ngodinez@slrconsulting.com.