National Transportation Leader at Burns & McDonnell Selected to Steer Kansas City Toward New Transportation Solutions

"What does transportation look like for you in 10, 20 or even 50 years from now? Will you drive a car, or will it drive you?" challenges Julie Lorenz, senior strategic consultant in the Burns & McDonnell Transportation Group. "Whether it's moving people, freight or data, our modes of transportation are beginning to blend together. We need to reimagine transportation in our region now, so city and state leaders can avoid investing millions, or even billions, of dollars into fixing something that may be obsolete in the future."

Now, Lorenz will be leading such insightful conversations with leaders in her own hometown to develop future transportation strategies for the region. The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce selected Lorenz, and industry colleague Scott Smith, to co-champion the Big 5 transportation initiative. In 2011, the chamber and Greg Graves, who at the time was serving as chamber chair and as chairman and CEO of Burns & McDonnell, created the Big 5 to focus on critical areas — from education to transportation — that can help make Kansas City one of America's best places to work, live, start a business and grow a business.

"Julie challenges conventional thinking. She looks at transit holistically and ties everything to technology, which will be an exciting approach for our pilot project with Google," says Joe Reardon, president and CEO, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, who recently announced Kansas City's partnership with Google's Urban Mobility Initiative.

Lorenz has developed strategic communication and long-range plans for departments of transportation in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and many other states throughout the country. She led public affairs for the Kansas Department of Transportation and has driven key national initiatives with dozens of organizations ranging from the Federal Highway Administration to the Transportation Research Board.

"Julie has an effective way of engaging others, making their voices heard and facilitating positive and visionary change that touches us all. We are fortunate to have her as a co-champion for this important Big 5 initiative," says Reardon.

Reardon says Lorenz will facilitate community meetings and together explore pathways to achieving the following transportation goals for the Big 5:

• Identify the most critical transportation issues from the business community.
• Transform the way employees use public transportation to commute to good-paying jobs throughout the metro area.
• Enable public and private sectors to leverage emerging technology and innovation to plan and operate effective transportation systems.
• Uncover solutions to decrease traffic crashes and fatalities.
• Leverage current transportation systems while investigating new streams of revenue.

"We are proud to have Julie play such an important role in the Big 5 initiative," says Ray Kowalik, chairman and CEO, Burns & McDonnell. "Julie is a very talented person and we are happy we can support our community's efforts in making us a world-class city in transportation."

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About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies made up of more than 6,000 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be on Fortune's 2018 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit burnsmcd.com.

Contact:  Kristi Widmar, Burns & McDonnell
816-448-7379
[email protected]

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