S&ME Inc. News

S&ME’s Technical Principal Program is designed to recognize technical leaders within S&ME who have advanced in using their professional experience and skills to provide the highest quality services to clients, and who also have become regional or national leaders in their technical fields. Additionally, Technical Principals are available to consult with S&ME staff tackling difficult technical challenges.

Joining our ranks of technical principal is Ken Barry, PE, project manager and environmental engineer in our Knoxville Branch.  Ken joined S&ME nine years ago with a couple decades of impressive previous experience. Ken earned a BS degree in Civil Engineering from Tennessee Tech University in 1982 and soon followed that with a masters in Environmental Systems Engineering from Clemson University.

Ken has been interested in science and engineering since elementary school, and calls himself fortunate that his grandfather had an excavation company – which meant he could be around heavy equipment from an early age.  He also used his love of architecture and history to co-author the application to make the Tennessee State Capitol an ASCE Civil Engineering Landmark.

At Tennessee Tech, he was a two-year officer of the ASCE Student Chapter. He also worked at a Georgia Power nuclear plant and was a research and teaching assistant for a Civil Engineering professor.  At Clemson, he was introduced to erosion control BMPs and stream geomorphology.  He has served S&ME extremely well in that service field.  Fresh out of grad school, he joined the EPA and participated in investigations at hazardous waste sites. He later joined Versar, running its EPA technical assistance contract and gaining RCRA experience.

He then spent ten years with Bechtel in Oak Ridge, gaining experience in human health assessment, waste disposal, project management and engineering.  For five years he was Project Engineer and Deputy Project Manager for a major contract for Loring Air Force Base. His work there included closure of two large landfills and the largest – at least to that time – cleanup and restoration of a stream system with 40 acres of wetlands.

Ken is now an environmental engineer and project manager in the Knoxville Branch.  He is also a diplomat of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers. He plans, executes and manages civil and environmental engineering projects, and participates in landfill design and permitting, hydrology and hydraulics, erosion control design, stream restoration, proposal preparation and looks for opportunities to apply his experience to unique situations.  Several of the projects he has participated in have won Engineering Excellence Awards from ACEC of Tennessee.

S&ME is fortunate to have Ken Barry as our newest Technical Principal. Congratulations Ken.