One of the best parts of my job is telling one of ENR's newsmakers that he or she is "the one"—the Award of Excellence winner. I also warn them that there is a lot of work ahead as an ENR editor extracts their life story.

This year's writer, Associate Editor Tom Sawyer, embarked on what turned out to be many, many long talks about Link's work in directing the study of the performance of flood defenses in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the work to refine risk-modeling tools to help guide plans for improving natural hazard defenses.

"It was a real pleasure," Sawyer says. "Ed is a joy to work with and was very patient with the whole thing, partly because he is a nice guy and partly because he knows this is an opportunity to get the word out about the importance of institutionalizing risk-mitigation criteria in water-resource project planning."

The research included a week in New Orleans and Vicksburg, Miss., shadowing Link as he met levee board presidents, civic leaders and local representatives of the Corps. "At times we seemed to be leading a small parade," Sawyer says, referring to photographer Michael Goodman, documentarian Ken Mandel and his video crew and ENR New Orleans correspondent Angelle Bergeron, among others.

As ENR was preparing to honor the work of Ed Link, our own work was honored as well. ENR won two prestigious Neal Awards from American Business Media on March 22 for best website and for best online series. Our sister publication Green Source also won the Neal for best start-up publication.

 Next week, ENR Insider, our electronic newsletter, will connect you to web-exclusive news and features on our award-winning ENR.com. The next print issue of ENR will be April 16.