Leader of the pack: UIUC alumnus Paul Kovacs making headway at Illinois Tollway

Leaders rise to the front of the pack because of their uncanny ability to continually innovate and improve our way of life. Paul Kovacs, chief engineering officer, has done just that as Illinois Tollway’s longest-serving front-runner with 20 years of service.

The steadfast public servant has helped numerous infrastructure and public safety initiatives come to fruition.

Earlier in March, he was recognized for his outstanding public service by the American Society of Civil Engineers as an Outstanding Projects and Leaders award-winner, which recognizes top-notch civil engineers for their incredible lifetime accomplishments.

Kovacs credits much of his commitment and accomplishments to his University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign education.

The ’83 grad may have earned a degree in civil engineering, but he actually started his UIUC journey enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“When I went down there and started out, I honestly did not know anything about engineering,” the South Side Chicago native said. “I really enjoyed all the math and science classes, so I ended up taking all of the prerequisite courses — chemistry, physics, calculus, everything that all the engineering majors were taking.”

Before making the switch to what would inevitably become his life’s work, Kovacs was required to take a foreign language class as part of his liberal arts training. He chose Spanish and boy is he glad he did, as his life would forever change that fateful day at Gregory Hall room 306.

“That’s where I met my future wife (Pamela),” Kovacs said. “We’ve been together ever since that first class of my freshmen year.”

The transportation expert spent the rest of his UIUC educational training concentrated on structural engineering and construction management — something he continues to apply to his work today.

“I am always very proud that I graduated from the U of I,” Kovacs said. “The thing they provide you with is how to approach problems and how to develop solutions in a critical manner.”

“If you can make it through Illinois, you feel like it develops a lot of confidence in you so that you have that ability to address challenges when you face them in your career,” he added.

With that confidence, Kovacs was able to land his first engineering gig at Sargent & Lundy, a Chicago-based engineering consultant, working at the Byron and Braidwood nuclear power plants.

Unfortunately, one of the U.S.’ worst nuclear power plant radiation leaks occurred at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania just a few years before Kovacs’ arrival, causing a major structural engineering job shortage.

“Staff there went down from 2,000 to about 200,” Kovacs said. “I knew I was going to have to find another job.”

He switched gears and found himself doing a hodgepodge of transportation work for former infrastructure firm BASCOR, which was later acquired by T. Y. Lin International Group.

“I was doing everything required to develop the plans and specs,” Kovacs said, “and that is what I enjoy most about the transportation field is that there are so many different ways and opportunities to get involved in the work.”

But with the birth of his sons, Paul and Alex, Kovacs couldn’t help but want to spend a little less time commuting and a little more time with his children. The Naperville resident looked no further than Illinois Tollway — a mere 10 miles from home — to plant his roots.

He started out as a project manager, working his way up to chief engineering officer, where he keeps busy “overseeing all the design, construction and maintenance and traffic operations associated with our roadways,” Kovacs said.

By far his favorite task is seeing the carrying out of so many capital improvement projects.

“Recently, the project I’ve been most proud of is we rebuilt and re-widened 62 miles of Interstate 90, and we did that in four years,” Kovacs said.

A few other unforgettable moments include converting 20 main-line plazas to open-road tolls as well as the current Move Illinois project.

The $14 billion program kicked off in 2011 and aims to reach completion within 15 years. Improvements include widening and rebuilding I-90’s Jane Addams Memorial Tollway, connecting I-294 to I-57 and much more.

Illinois Tollway is responsible for safely moving 1.4 million people daily. To assist with such a large task, Illinois Tollway often relies upon UIUC’s transportation research facility, Illinois Center for Transportation, to keep its efforts robust.

“ICT’s assisting us in developing new ways to increase the quality of our work and to save money on our projects,” Kovacs said.

“We generate ideas. We utilize ICT to provide us with the research to test those ideas. We deploy the results on a small scale somewhere in our system in one of our numerous projects and then if it works, we release it through the whole system pretty quickly,” he added.

Perhaps one of ICT’s biggest ambitions in creating safer Illinois roadways is the development of the Illinois Automated and Connected Track — a high-speed connected and autonomous freight and multimodal mobility track on Rantoul’s decommissioned Chanute Air Force Base. Such innovative efforts are something Kovacs can’t wait to see become reality.

“I know that these technologies can produce some great safety benefits for the motoring public, so I would hope that the Tollway would be a very strong supporter of any initiatives that impact safety and this one does,” Kovacs said.

The potential of I-ACT’s impact is one Kovacs sees making huge waves.

“It (I-ACT) really demonstrates to others throughout the whole country and maybe the whole world that we have a capability and a capacity to take on some of these big emerged technologies,” he added, “and hopefully that’s going to attract people to invest in our state and attract good people to our state.”

While Kovacs can’t help but continually look into the future in search of the next-best thing for transportation, he can rest assured he’s making a legacy for himself.

“I’m hoping that my legacy will be that I got to be a part of these capital programs, and I pushed a lot of safety initiatives that made things better for the public,” he said.

With so many accomplishments tied to his name, Kovacs knows the next generation of Illini civil engineers are also destined for greatness.

His advice?

“Don’t be afraid to take on challenges,” Kovacs said. “Don’t let the fear of failure prevent you from taking on or volunteering for tough projects or assignments.”