Jeff Lemna (BSCNE 1988), Career Development Director at The Walsh Group, has received the 2023 Construction Engineering Outstanding Alumni Award.

Jeff joined The Walsh Group after earning his B.S from Purdue in Construction Engineering and Management in 1988. He relocated shortly thereafter to help establish Walsh’s presence in California, working initially as a Project Engineer on their Seismic Upgrade project at Boeing Aircraft. Jeff was quickly promoted to Assistant Project Manager and led Walsh’s leadership efforts on a number of additional projects at Boeing, before relocating to Monterey, CA where he was the lead on-site manager for a 200,000 SF Design/Build office building for the California Testing Bureau.

During his time in Monterey, Jeff was promoted to Project Manager and relocated to assist with a new Rapid Transit Station in Castro Valley, CA for the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority (BART). Once the BART assignment was over, Jeff found himself back in Walsh’s Monterey office, serving as Program Manager for multiple clients he’d obtained throughout the Western US. These work relationships led to Jeff having projects located throughout the Western Coast of the US, into both Montana and Nevada, and in Hawaii. Jeff returned to Walsh’s Chicago headquarters in 2004 and was given the task of creating a formalized Corporate Training program for Walsh’s Project Engineers. That program is today seen as a hallmark of the company’s success and boasts well over 100 Technical and Leadership courses- each of which were designed and created in-house, to assure they incorporated Walsh’s culture. Jeff’s programs have also helped prepare over 100 Walsh engineers to successfully pass their Professional Engineer Licensing Exam.

Jeff was promoted to the position of Career Development Director, giving him oversight of company Recruiting, Training and Organizational Development in 2015, where he has greater influence on the procurement and development of talent within the organization and holds responsibility for maintaining its non-craft workforce of 3,000+ employees. Jeff is a long-time member of Purdue’s Construction Engineering Advisory Board, serving as its Executive Director in 2014 2015. He’s served in similar Executive Director roles for both the Construction Industry Training Resource Network (CIRTN) and the Construction People Executives Group (CPEG)- an organization of large construction company HR Executives. Jeff is a board member of The Legacy Guild in his hometown, a volunteer group which has provided college scholarships valued at over $1.7 million to local students who have lost a parent. Jeff is also involved with his Church’s Appalachia Service Project efforts, and recently returned from a week helping improve housing for residents in rural Virginia. Jeff is extremely humbled and appreciate of his designation as an Outstanding CEM Alumni, and strives daily to uphold the standards of professionalism, integrity and human service that are held by so many of his CEM colleagues.