Every year, Autodesk Construction Cloud (AEC), a company connecting teams together from the field to the office, receives hundreds of nominations for the well-known 40 Under 40 Champions of Construction awards.
This year, Iowa State University Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering alum Jay Mathes was named one of the 40 Under 40 Champions of Construction.
According to AEC, the 40 Under 40 Champions of Construction awardees have ‘demonstrated their ability to inspire, educate, and advance the industry in ways worth admiring.’ Mathes, who is a virtual construction lead at Miron Construction, was surprised and happy to learn that he received this award, he said.
“I was very surprised and joyful when I discovered that I received this award,” Mathes said. “ I work with a lot of extremely talented people and, by the nature of the award, knew that someone close to me had submitted the nomination. It was incredibly validating that the effort we put in is providing value and getting recognized by our teams and our company as a whole.”
In Mathes’ career, the projects he works on often require field and office work. By designing and constructing buildings digitally before physically building them, Mathes and his team are able to eliminate potential errors before they could become extremely time consuming and expensive to fix.
“In my position, I get to do so many amazing things with technology that we could only dream about in the past,” Mathes said. “Every day, I have the opportunity to construct buildings in a digital world and work out problems that are seemingly minor when we encounter them, but would become major issues in the real world. I get to work with a cross section of the entire construction industry including owners, architects, engineers, project managers, superintendents, and field crews and get to demonstrate the value of BIM (building information modeling) every day.”
Being a part of designing and executing construction, and working with a variety of different disciplines, Mathes says he has gained a lot of valuable experience in collaboration and industry work.
Mathes has worked on several important projects – the most recent being BIM coordination on a large healthcare project. Through Mathes’ leadership, the project was successfully completed with no issues at all.
“Because of his work ethic, drive, and leadership abilities, his teams have quickly identified Jay as an industry leader,” the AEC nomination page said. “Jay has become the “go-to VDC guy” for many of Miron’s high profile clients such as the Green Bay Packers, Fincantieri, and ThedaCare.”
With a bright future ahead, Mathes will continue to ‘establish best practices, manage workflows and continuously research new technologies.’