Donald T. Goldberg, co-founder of the geotechnical engineering firm GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. and an active member of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section, has died. He was 92.
“It would be difficult to discuss the history of the geoenvironmental consulting industry without mentioning Donald Goldberg,” wrote current GZA president and CEO Patrick Sheehan on the company website. “GZA’s core values – operating with integrity, embracing challenges, providing opportunities for all, caring for our communities, and supporting employee ownership – were instilled in the firm by our co-founders 56 years go, and were reflected in how Don led his life.”
Goldberg, P.E., F.ASCE, attended Tufts University, graduating in 1948, and later earned a second bachelor’s and master’s degree in civil engineering from MIT. He began his career as a geotechnical engineer with Haley & Aldrich before co-founding GZA with his MIT classmate William Zoino in 1964.
Serving as the firm’s CEO until 1995, Goldberg helped to drive GZA’s early growth as a geotechnical engineering consulting firm as well as an expansion into environmental engineering services. Today, GZA employs more than 700 professionals in offices throughout New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Great Lakes states. After retirement, Goldberg remained active as a geotechnical consultant and adviser.
“Typically, in any meeting of a group of engineers, he was the best in the room. He was brilliant. He was quick,” wrote Sheehan in a tribute along with William Hadge, a senior principal and a former CEO of GZA.
Goldberg served on the board of the Boston section, and had been a chair of its structural and geotechnical committees. He was a voracious reader of history and nonfiction and was also known as an outdoorsman who loved long bike rides, nature walks, and skied well into his eighties.
The Boston section has posted an extended tribute to Goldberg written by Sheehan. Read it here.
