Patricia D. “Pat” Galloway, Ph.D., P.E.
1957–2004
First woman president of ASCE, risk manager and arbitrator, barrier breaker
Patricia D. “Pat” Galloway, Ph.D., P.E., a driven executive in the male-dominated field of construction risk management and the first woman president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, has died at 67.
Dr. Galloway, a Society of Women Engineers member, received SWE’s Distinguished New Engineer award in 1980 and Upward Mobility Award in 2003. She wrote in nomination documents that in high school, she leaned more toward arts and literature than math and science. But at a mandatory class about engineering, a structural engineering professor from the University of Kentucky showed drawings of buildings that reminded her of her own artistic sketches, and she was hooked.
After earning a degree in civil engineering at Purdue University in 1978 — in three years — Dr. Galloway joined CH2M Hill as only the second woman to be hired by the firm. She served as a deep-rock tunnel inspector for a wastewater project despite a subcontractor’s objections to working with a woman in that role.
She earned an MBA in finance at the New York Institute of Technology and joined The Nielsen-Wurster Group Inc. in New York in 1981 as a senior consultant, working with her husband, Kris Nielsen. He died of cancer in 2013.
Dr. Galloway was the first woman to take and pass the Project Management lnstitute’s Project Management Professional certification exam, in 1984. She became a chartered engineer in Australia and Manitoba, Canada, and held professional engineer licenses in 15 U.S. states.
Her personnel management and technical skills propelled her through the ranks at Nielson-Wurster; she became CEO in 2001. She earned a national and international reputation for her risk management and dispute resolution skills and worked on such projects as the Musi Hydroelectric Dam in Indonesia and the international airport in Guam. She was the first nonlawyer member of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, becoming a fellow. Dr. Galloway served as a guest professor at Kochi University of Technology in Japan, where she earned a doctorate in infrastructure systems engineering.
In 2008, she and husband Nielsen co-founded Pegasus–Global Holdings Inc., an engineering consulting firm based in Cle Elum, Washington, where she worked on such “giga-projects” as the Panama Canal, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and London’s Crossrail. She founded Galloway Arbitration in 2018.
She joined ASCE and SWE in the early 1980s and held leadership positions in both. She was president of the SWE Wisconsin Section from 1980–1981 and president of the New York Section from 1982–1983. She chaired many technical and activities committees for ASCE and served on its board in various roles from 1994 through 2002. She served as its president in 2004. Named a fellow of ASCE in 1993, Dr. Galloway was selected for the National Academy of Engineering Celebration of Women – 2000; the White House Commission: 2000 Design Award, and the Purdue University Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award in 1991.
In her application to membership in SWE, she expressed the opinion that women must work harder and achieve more than most men to be considered as good at engineering.
“Being in construction, I have realized that men are not going to change overnight,” she wrote. “Consequently, women must slowly educate the male population about integrating women into the workforce while at the same time demonstrating our abilities.”
ASCE’s 2023 president, Maria Lehman, told ASCE’s Civil Engineering Source, “I lost a chunk of my heart” upon learning of Dr. Galloway’s passing. “She was a great mentor to me. She didn’t break through the glass ceiling — she exploded it.”
Dr. Galloway is survived by her husband, James Schill, and six children.
Sources
ENR, ASCE’s Civil Engineering Source, SWE Magazine, SWE archives.
