GBA promoted 16 staff members in December, including staff in three of the firm’s four regional offices.
- Promoted to Associate were Matt Butkus, PE, QCxP, LEED AP; Jeff Cochran, PE, CPD; David Cohen, PE, CCP, DCEP; Alex Dodd, QCxP; Fiona Martin McCarthy, PE, QCxP, BEAP, LEED AP; Eric Rosenberg, PE, LEED AP; Christopher Sbarbaro, PE, GPD, LEED AP BD+C; Tim Shinnick, PE, QCxP, CEM; and Randy Steckman, PE.
- David Nelson, PE, and Bill Wylie, EIT, were promoted to Project Manager.
- Jalay Shukla, PE, LEED Green Associate was promoted to Senior Project Engineer.
- Amy Adam, Ben Mahrer, Kyle Wallenfang, and Tony Zappia were promoted to Project Engineer.
Matt Butkus joined the Chicago regional office in 2006. He holds a BSME from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. As an experienced mechanical engineer and project manager, he leads GBA’s retro-commissioning team and is also an integral part of the firm’s building commissioning team. His prior experience as a mechanical engineer has involved numerous infrastructure design projects focusing on chiller plants and air-handling unit replacements.
Jeff Cochran became a member of the Chicago regional office in 2007. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Southern Illinois University. He is a Professional Engineer in Wisconsin. Jeff’s engineering work is focused on plumbing, medical gas/vacuum, and fire protection design and project management for healthcare facilities. He is experienced with infrastructure and departmental renovations, as well as new construction.
David Cohen became a member of Chicago regional office in 2008. He holds a BSME from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. He provides design, energy, commissioning, and retro-commissioning services to healthcare, higher education, government, hotel, and commercial clients. A well-qualified project manager, he has deep experience in complex facilities, including data centers, labs, and hospitals.
Alex Dodd is based in the firm’s Madison, WI, office, which he joined in 2021. A 2004 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he holds the BSME degree. Alex has extensive experience as an energy engineer, leading facility audits and project discoveries, investment-grade project development and analysis, support of energy management systems, and retro-commissioning and commissioning initiatives.
Fiona Martin McCarthy joined the Chicago regional office in 2010. She graduated from the University of Dayton with a BSME in 2008 and earned a Master of Science in Renewable & Clean Energy from the same university in 2009. Fiona is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. As a mechanical engineer specializing in energy efficiency and sustainable design, she works on energy and resource benchmarking, energy conservation studies, LEED consulting, energy efficient systems, EPA consulting, commissioning, and retro-commissioning projects.
Eric Rosenberg joined the Chicago regional office in 2011. He graduated with a BS in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, and received an MSME from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. Eric is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois and Oregon. He has mechanical design and project management experience on a wide breadth of project types, including healthcare, hospitality, and large commercial buildings, as well as extensive experience in noise and vibration control for acoustically demanding buildings and complexes.
Chris Sbarbaro joined GBA’s Chicago regional office in 2015. He holds a BSME from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Illinois. His responsibilities include engineering design and commissioning of plumbing, fire protection, and medical/specialty gas systems. He determines system requirements, provides construction cost estimates, reviews bids and submittal data/shop drawings, conveys code analyses, designs systems, and supervises the preparation of construction documents.
Tim Shinnick became a member of the Chicago regional office in 2009. He holds a BSME from the University of Notre Dame and is a licensed professional Engineer in Illinois. He specializes in retro-commissioning and commissioning work and building analysis, particularly for healthcare and higher education clients. He supports the entire GBA commissioning team through expertise in online commissioning software, and was a co-developer of the firm’s proprietary Trend Sumo® and Energy Sumo® platforms.
Randy Steckman joined the Chicago regional office in 2014. He earned a BSME from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2006. His experience encompasses systems design and analysis, as well as project and construction management, for commercial, healthcare, higher education, and industrial facility types.
David Nelson, a member of the Chicago regional office since 2011, earned his BSME from Marquette University in 2010. His responsibilities include gathering information and performing various calculations, and HVAC design for new and existing buildings. He is also a lead analyst for GBA’s annual Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey (grummanbutkus.com/HES).
William Wylie became a member of the Chicago regional team in 2012, shortly after receiving his BArch degree from Illinois Institute of Technology. He specializes in energy modeling and the engineering design of hospitals, higher education facilities, theatres, and special requirement facilities (for instance, acoustically sensitive facilities, cleanrooms, art vaults).
Jalay Shukla holds the BSME from Gujarat Technological University (2014) and the MSME from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2017); he joined GBA’s Chicago regional office in 2020. His work focuses on mechanical engineering design. Jalay’s areas of specialization include healthcare, higher education, and commercial facilities. He is experienced in multiple software platforms and works to integrate computation in building engineering services.
Amy Adam is a mechanical engineer in GBA’s Milwaukee regional office, which she joined in 2016. She received the BSME from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018. Amy’s responsibilities encompass many project phases, including planning and design of mechanical systems and equipment for large pharmaceutical facilities.
Benjamin Mahrer, an electrical engineer in the Milwaukee regional office, joined the firm in 2017. He holds the BSAE and MSAE degrees (Electrical Systems for Buildings Specialty), conferred in 2019. Ben’s responsibilities include the design of power, voice/data, lighting, lightning protection, grounding, fire alarm, and security systems.
Kyle Wallenfang, who joined GBA in 2017, is an electrical engineer in the Milwaukee regional office. His BSAE (Electrical Systems for Buildings Specialty) was awarded by the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2011. Kyle designs power distribution, voice-data, telecommunications, lighting, lightning protection, grounding, fire alarm, and security systems.
Anthony Zappia became a member of the Chicago regional office in 2021; he received the BSME from the University of Notre Dame in 2019. Tony specializes in mechanical engineering design and construction administration for clients in diverse market sectors, including healthcare, higher education, commercial, and government.
GBA congratulates these team members for their valuable ongoing contributions to the firm, which specializes in energy and resource consulting for large, energy-intensive facilities as well as mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and medical/specialty gas design services; commissioning, retro-commissioning, and monitoring-based commissioning; energy and resource benchmarking; energy conservation studies; MEP infrastructure planning and upgrades; LEED, Green Globes, and sustainability consulting; and computerized building modeling. Founded in 1973 in Evanston, IL, the company also has offices in Wisconsin (Madison, Wauwatosa) and the New York metropolitan area (Hoboken, NJ).
