LAS VEGAS, NV, March 22, 2024 /24-7PressRelease/ -- David John Flynn, P.Eng, PE, has been included in Marquis Who's Who. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
A skilled and insightful civil engineer, registered in Canada and the USA, Mr. Flynn has been a valued team member in many organizations requiring innovative and forward-thinking solutions to bring design and construction together in real-world settings. Much of Mr. Flynn's career has been in support of projects in northern climates like Alaska, where short construction seasons, extreme weather, and devastating fire seasons, challenge many project completions and timelines. Master-Scheduling skills developed first in Canada for Coast Steel Fabricators, working under David Halliday, P.Eng and Dr. Siegfried Stiemer, a world renowned engineering and fabrication company specializing in complex telescope-dome structures and theme park rides, brought him to Alaska in 2003 to work on the Pogo Gold Mine Project. Following the completion of a 50-mile roadway and mining complex in the heart of central Alaska, he moved to supporting the Missile Defense Program in nearby Delta Junction, Alaska.
Mr. Flynn obtained registration with EGBC (Engineers and Geoscientist, British Columbia) in 2009 as part of a deliberate transition to move away from his scheduling and management strengths and focus on following up on his degree and career aspirations to become a professional engineer. Mr. Flynn was assigned to manage a team of engineers who were contracted to bring the design and implementation of all mission critical equipment in a $290M backup power plant for the Missile Defense Complex (MDC) at Fort Greely, Alaska, in 2010. This culminated in a 3000-page submittal document and along with this and over 1500-submittals that Mr. Flynn reviewed and worked to get approved, allowed this facility to be rated to provide power to the MDC should both an EMP blast and a 7+ Richter earthquake affect the facility either individually or in combination. Some of the top engineers in the country who worked this project include Bob Bachman, Harold Sprague, Andrew Whittaker, Sam Swan, Farzin Beigi, Chris Zweifel, and an accomplished team from Black & Veatch, among others.
In addition to the backup power plant (FPP), Mr. Flynn was a key contributor to six (6) other critical facilities' construction and later worked for facility support contractors, BKSS & Wolf Creek, to maintain these and other facilities at Fort Greely including the Allen Army Airfield where military training, missile delivery, and medivac activities occur regularly. As a DPW-Engineer at Fort Greely, Mr. Flynn was tasked to survey and document all the paved surfaces associated with the Garrison and MDC. Mr. Flynn attended USACE-based PAVER training in Loveland, CO and leveraged this training to develop strengths in assessing pavements, their failure types, and gain insights into ways to improve their performance and durability. Mr. Flynn participated in a Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) study of Frost Heaving at Allen Army Airfield, led by Kevin Bjella-PE, to help understand better what was causing frost-heave related pavement deterioration and then use this information to redesign runway overruns and shoulder areas there. Mr. Flynn worked with GIS personnel at Fort Greely to locate, map, and coordinate existing survey monuments to help determine seasonal elevation changes in the runways and in frost-heaving areas. Further, the location and correlation of monument data was extended out 20 miles from the GIS base-station at Fort Greely. Several documented monuments were tied closely into the GIS System with an accuracy to about the size of a dime, fourteen (14) miles from the base-station. This effort allowed for a much better correlation of site work to the GIS database at Fort Greely and therefore existing assets and their locations with related surface areas could then be input into the government ISR (Installation Sustainment and Readiness) system. This system is a key component to how taxpayer money is spent maintaining or improving military facilities, roadways, and other related infrastructure. Prior to Mr. Flynn's efforts, this had never been achieved, or attempted.
The Flynn's lost their daughter Alexis to a brain aneurism in 2019 and were also struggling to get services provided to their Autistic son in rural Alaska. They decided to move to Las Vegas to be closer to family and to make a new start without their daughter while gaining better access to services for their son Jacob. This move brought positive changes in time for both parents career wise. Mr. Flynn was able to obtain a job with a civil engineering company. Working in a design support capacity and with engineers who had successfully completed the NCEES examination process allowed Mr. Flynn the added assistance he needed to get through the testing process to achieve registration in the USA. This was the last step to getting accepted with AELS (Alaska Engineers and Licensed Surveyors). Once registered in Alaska, Mr. Flynn worked with NCEES to gain comity registration in Nevada. He is now a registered engineer in two countries and two States.
As part of this journey, Mr. Flynn became a US citizen in 2010. This allowed him to apply for a Secret Clearance with sensitive US government work. Mr. Flynn did not want to give up his Canadian citizenship to gain a clearance. This would typically delay the approval process and required a more extensive background check. On two separate occasions, Mr. Flynn was granted a Secret Clearance as a dual national. This is a somewhat rare situation and only individuals of good character and proven commitment to service in the US are allowed this privilege. Mr. Flynn currently holds a Secret Clearance and it was an important asset to allow him to work for S&B Christ Consulting, LLC (SBCC). The bulk of their work comes from federally-funded projects and many require clearances to work on related project designs.
On a more personal side of things, the Flynn family decided to make efforts to give back to a community, Delta Junction, Alaska, that raised over $50,000US to help with expenses towards a kidney transplant for Alexis. The family worked with others to start a non-profit 501(c3) corporation that provided food-box distributions on a monthly basis to over 200 families in the community. Additionally, this corporation, the Deltana Community Services Partnership (DCSP), was able to raise money and get grant-funding and City of Delta Junction support to build the first low-rent senior housing complex to be built in Interior Alaska outside of the Fairbanks Borough. The organization provided other services as well including counselling support for individuals struggling with alcohol and substance abuse issues, community fairs, and studies to determine what the community wanted for additional services. Mr. Flynn and his wife, Barbara, both served as president of the DCSP and were key to the initial success of this organization.
The DCSP hosted a visit from the Governor's Council of Alaska on Disabilities and Special Education around 2010 where the Director, Duane Mayes was in attendance. Later at the Flynn home, the Director saw the Flynn's interacting with their children and asked if they would consider joining the Council. Mr. Flynn was accepted by the Governor of Alaska to replace an outgoing member who had just started a new term. At Mr. Flynn's first Council meeting he was elected to be the Legislative Chair, the third highest position on the Board. This started as a daunting task, but with great support from the other Council members and staff, he was able to help the group lobby legislative members in Alaska to pass a law requiring private insurance companies to cover the costs of diagnosis and treatment of individuals who suffered with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This opened the door to have all medical insurers in Alaska be required to cover these services.
Mr. Flynn left SBCC at the end of August 2023 to join Holcim SWR, Inc. Holcim was looking for estimating and engineering support in their Las Vegas area work. Mr. Flynn was able to review and stamp annual mix-design submittals and a variety of other aggregate and asphalt paving related documents. A need arose for a QC Manager in the organization and Mr. Flynn was appointed to this position. He is currently working with the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) and Clark County to develop new mix designs that better the community roadways and resolve and clarify specification issues that may be leading to placement failures by the contractors in the area. He is also looking at specification changes that may better make use of locally recycled materials, reduce landfill input, and find ways to use calcium/magnesium rich aggregates from their Sloan, Nevada, quarry in agriculture, acid-mine drainage mitigation, and strengthened roadway and parking lot subbase materials. He is looking into becoming a guest speaker at engineering and paving organization luncheons and industry outreaches and conferences.
Mr. Flynn comes from an athletic family. His father was a collegiate basketball player and professional lacrosse player in Canada. Mr. Flynn played collegiate-level soccer for Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, was in the Junior National Soccer program in Canada and briefly played semi-professional soccer there as well. His family, including his sister Monica, his brother Joel, and nephew Luke are also musical and Mr. Flynn performed as an adult in musical theater. He often performed live in Alaska in bands, playing guitar, bass, harmonica and singing. He is currently playing in a band in Las Vegas with the goal to perform locally in casinos and bars in the area. Mr. Flynn's Christian outlook and faith is credited to the example and encouragement of his parents, Doug & Lorraine Flynn, and their values and beliefs modeled to him throughout his life and has played a large role in his contributions to social justice and service to the communities he has lived in and the Catholic churches he has regularly attended. He has provided musical service, participated on Parish Councils and taught Sunday school classes throughout the years. He helped establish the first youth soccer association in Delta Junction, Alaska and coached for two season. He plans to continue these service efforts in the Las Vegas area and looks forward to doing more of this when he eventually retires from fulltime work. Mr. Flynn and his family have often, like other families, experienced setbacks and adversity, but these have in many cases proven to be stepping stones to eventual successes, some included above.
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