HNTB finds success on the road

By Paul Snyder

Flying into Milwaukee gives Matt Hintze a pretty cool view.

As the plane descends, the vice president of Wisconsin operations for the Milwaukee branch of HNTB Corp. can pick out a number of his company’s past and current projects: the Marquette Interchange, Park East, the Sixth Street Viaduct and, of course, the stadium interchange — the first Milwaukee project that HNTB worked on in 1956.

“It’s basically the project that set up our Milwaukee office,” Hintze said. “When Milwaukee County Stadium came down and Miller Park went up, we also did some of the roadwork that went along with that.

“You feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment just to look down and see work completed alongside work that’s still in progress.”

Hintze cited HNTB’s designs on the Marquette Interchange as the flagship project of a successful year that also saw work on the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s 2020 Facility Plan and the East Washington Avenue reconstruction project in Madison.

And more roadwork will drive the company in 2006. Hintze said HNTB is involved with the Interstate 94 north-south corridor planning effort in addition to an operations analysis for Madison’s Beltline Highway, which could lead to an environmental impact study for future expansion.

“The road projects present an opportunity to get really involved in the community,” he said. “These projects touch so many lives, from the big political entities to the people who use the roads every day to get where they’re going to the people who live right next to where the construction is going on.”

And while Hintze can truly appreciate the scope of the company’s work from a few thousand feet up, it’s not hard to recognize it at street level, either.

“You hear from people all the time when you’re working on road projects — they want to tell you what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right,” he said. “It’s important to step back and take a moment to appreciate the work you’ve put into place. There’s a real sense of pride that runs throughout the company with each of our projects.”

And Hintze sees no reason that sense of pride should diminish any time soon.

“I’m really optimistic about Wisconsin’s future,” he said. “It’s a good place to work and to implement designs and projects. I think there’s going to be a lot of success here for years to come.”

Engineers