Jerry Holder, a vice president at Garver, has 26 years of transportation and program management experience. He began his career at Garver in 1986, working there until 2000, when he left to join HNTB Corp., an architecture, civil engineering and construction management firm based in Kansas City. Holder rose to vice president at HNTB, leaving it in 2012 to return to Garver, where he works in the North Little Rock office.
Holder earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and an MBA from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Some of Jerry Holder’s highest-profile projects are Interstate 540 (now Interstate 49) in northwest Arkansas and the High-Five Interchange in Dallas.
Please describe your role at Garver and your role in the Arkansas Highway & Transportation Department’s transportation improvement program.
I am the director of transportation for Garver, where I oversee more than 120 professionals in seven states. We provide road, bridge, traffic, environmental and drainage design for departments of transportation, cities and counties. The AHTD selected Garver to lead the $1.8 billion Connecting Arkansas Program, which consists of 36 projects around the state, and I serve as the program manager for that program.
What’s the status of the Interstate 30 widening project?
We are in the National Environmental Policy Act phase, examining wetlands, historical districts, noise levels and cultural resources to determine the impacts the remaining options will have on the surrounding areas.
How do you respond to concerns that replacing the I-30 bridge and widening the highway could hurt what has been the successful redevelopment of downtown Little Rock?
We take those comments very seriously and have adapted our plans over time as citizens have expressed concerns about aspects of the project. We schedule public meetings for exactly that purpose. The successful redevelopment of downtown Little Rock has been a source of pride for this city, and we’ve made working with community leaders on the subject a top priority.
Improving the interstate will ultimately be an economic development tool for the area that more quickly connects motorists with where they want to be, whether that’s employees driving to work or patrons driving to downtown restaurants and retail spaces.
What has been your most satisfying project?
I was fortunate to have worked for Garver and serve as the roadway design engineer for I-49 from just south of the Bobby Hopper Tunnel up to Fayetteville. I walked every step of the alignment when there wasn’t anything but a wooden stake every 100 feet in the wilderness. It was my job to determine the location of the north- and southbound lanes to minimize earthwork.
My parents drove the Pig Trail to go to the UA, I drove Highway 71, and my three children drove I-49, which I was proud to have a role in creating. It is always rewarding for me to drive to Fayetteville and remember all the design iterations it took our team at Garver to get to the final drawings.
How did you get involved in this line of work?
My dad is a civil engineer. As I grew up he would talk to me about how things were planned, designed and constructed. He put me on a survey crew for his company so I could realize I didn’t want to work outside in the Arkansas summers, and he helped me get an internship at Garver, where I worked on the Little Rock Airport runway and the hydroelectric power plant at Murray Lock & Dam. After I graduated, I was fortunate to get a job with Garver, where I worked in the aviation division for four years. After that I transferred to Garver’s highway design group and am grateful to have been working on transportation projects for the last 26 years.
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