Ireland is considered home, but Brian Curran’s work has taken him all around the world from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and to his current job on VTA’s BART Silicon Valley Phase II (BSVII) here in California.
It’s the fifth major metro project he has worked on during his 21-year career, 16 years of which has been with Bechtel Corporation, a large American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management firm. On BSVII, he manages the construction management services (CMS) team, which is responsible for oversight of the contractor’s activities. As construction manager, he leads a team of inspectors and engineers who provide oversight on health and safety, quality, schedule and cost. The CMS team also produces detailed reports to ensure VTA and key stakeholders understand how the project is progressing.
“I really like seeing things progress,” Curran says. “I enjoy working with large and diverse teams and collaborating because I think projects like this will be successful based on the team’s ability to work together.”
Curran worked on Sydney’s Metro project, which built two tunnels north and south through the city‘s downtown core and also under the Sydney Harbor. These complex and challenging projects take time and require pivotal technical skills.
“Everybody wishes that transit projects could be wished into place overnight, but we all understand that they’re very complex and very challenging,” Curran says. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint, but if you keep the destination in mind it’s going to be worth all of that effort.”
In his two years on BSVII, he’s most proud of the momentum built on the project, especially at the West Portal launch structure site, which is on time and on budget.
“There’s a lot of credit due to the wider West Portal team. Everybody worked extremely hard to get the design in place, the construction package awarded, the third-party agreements in place and then credit to Kiewit-Shea-Traylor (KST), the contractor, for executing the work to such a high standard.”
Curran says he’s excited for what the future holds.
“Projects are always most challenging when you’re in the midst of it, but once accomplished, you can look back on the project with an enormous sense of satisfaction and pride.”
