Lynchburg Business

July 2010 Movers & Shakers

Issue: July 2010 by Johanna Calfee in Movers and Shakers

Mark W. Maslow, President of Southern Landscape Group, Inc., has been appointed to the Virginia Tech Horticulture Department Advisory Board. Maslow, who is a graduate of the department, continues to support the department and students by returning to campus to speak with students as an industry professional and the opportunities that are available. While in school, Maslow was involved in the first major expansion of the Hahn Horticulture Garden at Virginia Tech. Today, the department has over 85 students actively studying Landscape Design and Construction and Environmental Horticulture.  For more information on Virginia Tech’s Department of Horticulture, visit www.hort.vt.edu.

Rick Comar, has been named Mortgage Loan Originator for Select Bank. Comar joined Select Bank in June 2010 and is responsible for originating mortgage loans, as well as mortgage loan growth. Comar formerly served with Blue Ridge Mortgage as Residential Mortgage Loan Specialist and has over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry. Comar is a graduate of Liberty University. Currently, he serves as a member of the Hill City Founders BNI Lynchburg, of which he has served as past president.

T. A. (Tim) Groover, P.E. President and COO of Wiley|Wilson, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the non-profit Employee Assistance of Central Virginia, Inc. (EACV). EACV provides employee assistance services and organizational development consulting dedicated to strengthening people and organizations. Wiley|Wilson is a 100 percent employee-owned company that provides professional architectural and engineering consulting services from offices in Lynchburg, Richmond and Alexandria.

AREVA has been named a Grand Award winner in the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) 2010 Engineering Excellence Awards with vendor Michael Baker Jr., Inc., an engineering unit of Michael Baker Corporation. As one of eight Grand Award winners, the AREVA/Baker team, which consisted solely of Lynchburg AREVA personnel (with the exception of Baker himself), was also a finalist for the Grand Conceptor Award for the year’s best overall engineering achievement. As a women-led project, the majority of the road crew is comprised of females—eight in all—with one male member also on the team.

The AREVA/Baker team received the national award for its outstanding route planning, bridge and highway engineering and permitting to support AREVA NP Inc.’s delivery of two steam generators to Three Mile Island Generating Station (TMI) from Port Deposit, Md. to Middletown, Pa. Each steam generator and transporter unit, at 825 tons, 153-feet long, 18-feet wide and 24-feet high, were the largest loads ever transported on Pennsylvania and Maryland highways. The route to TMI was characterized by its 75-mile length, hilly terrain, narrow rural roadways, many water crossings and network of low, overhead utility lines.

The transport received widespread public and media attention over the 15 days needed to travel the route. Spectators lined the route on a daily basis, and there were numerous television stories, more than 100 print articles and more than 28,000 hits to the AREVA project website.