Obituary

KUESEL

Thomas R. Kuesel, a noted bridge and tunnel engineer and former partner at Parsons Brinckerhoff, New York City, died on Feb. 17 in Connecticut after a long illness. He was 83. Kuesel, whose PB career spanned 43 years, contributed to design as project manager or engineer of more than 270 transportation structures and systems in the U.S. and abroad. As an engineering manager on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in California, he directed design of 20 miles of subways, 25 miles of aerial structures, two hard-rock tunnels and a 3.6-mile immersed-tube tunnel under San Francisco Bay. Kuesel earned his civil engineering master’s degree from Yale University at age 20 and was named chairman of PB’s U.S.-based transportation design unit in 1984. He retired from the company in 1990 but remained a consultant. Kuesel was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1977 and received the Golden Beaver Award in engineering in 1989 from The Beavers, a West Coast heavy-construction group. He was co-editor of the “Tunnel Engineering Handbook,” which is a standard reference manual used worldwide, and as a writer he published more than 60 technical articles.