Abe A. Adewale, principal of ABNA Engineering in St. Louis, was reelected to serve the second year of a three-year term as member of the Board of Directors of American Council of Engineering Companies of Missouri (ACEC/MO)
ACEC/MO, headquartered in Jefferson City, is a state association of over 100 of Missouri’s leading engineering companies, representing over 8,500 employees who annually design billions of dollars in constructed public work and private industry projects. The council’s member representatives are the design professional owners and top management of these firms.
“ACEC is the body of businesses that help to guide infrastructure spending and improvement and which speaks for engineering companies across the country,” Adewale said.
“It is therefore important to have diverse representation, to not only speak for diverse communities, but to also understand what major initiatives such as roads, bridges, facility upgrades for education, etc., are coming in the future and communicate that back to our community.”
Adewale said ACEC/MO in particular has access to politicians and heads of public entities such as MoDOT, Metropolitan Sewer District, St. Louis County, St. Louis City, Kansas City and the Corps of Engineers, as well as with large contractors.
“While sitting at these tables has been beneficial for ABNA,” Adewale said, “I use every opportunity possible to engage in discussions around fairness and inclusion for minority-owned businesses and how new rules and funding allocations affect minority communities.”
Along with Nicole Adewale, co-founder and president of ABNA (and his wife), Adewale was named 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year Award by the St. Louis American Foundation. Since starting their company in June 1994, they’ve grown ABNA from two employees to more than 80, and they perform work in about 13 states. It’s one of the top 20 engineering firms and top 25 minority-owned businesses in the St. Louis area.
“We’ve gone from designing airports in St. Louis to designing much larger airports like Chicago O’Hare International Airport,” Adewale said.
They’ve also gone from working on Missouri and Illinois departments of transportation projects to managing a multimillion-dollar interchange infrastructure in Illinois.
ABNA has worked on the Metropolitan Sewer District’s storm systems, the Interstate-64 construction, Cross County Metrolink extension, Interstate 55 reconstruction and IDOT for major interchanges and toll ways. They were involved in the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport expansion for 12 years, which got them heavily invested in aviation.
“ABNA Engineering is what you would call the United Nations of engineering companies,” Adewale said. “We have people from literally every continent in the world working at ABNA.”
Specific goals the ACEC/MO board set for the coming year include: to support legislation on business issues of interest, to support a transportation funding coalition and to continue to nurture working relationships with key public client groups in Missouri.
Other St. Louis-area firm principals serving on the ACEC/MO board include: Chairman-Elect Daniel R. Meckes, president & CEO of Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, Inc.; Secretary/Treasurer Joseph G. Hagerty, CEO of Oates Associates, Inc.; and National Director David A. Diestelkamp, sales manager, Central Region of Jacobs Engineering Group.
