‘A phenomenal opportunity’: Record-setting crowd packs Kalahari for C-E Conference

January 20, 2025

By Lane Kimble

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. — A record-setting crowd of more than 750 attendees packed day one of the WTBA/WisDOT Contractor-Engineer Conference on Thursday. The sheer number of people had WTBA President Brian Endres pondering future venues.

“I think we will have to go to Lambeau Field next year,” Endres said with a smile. “It’s a tribute to the content that we’re putting out at WTBA and also the PDHs (professional development hours) with the amount of engineers we have involved.

“The desire to collaborate and get to know and have a space to build those relationships, this is a great forum for that.”

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The day’s general session began at 12:30 p.m. and featured WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman and updates from WisDOT division leaders.

Later, Federal Highway Administration Wisconsin Division Administrator Glenn Fulkerson and American Road and Transportation Builders Association General Counsel Rich Juliano both provided federal updates.

The annual conference also marked the addition of vendor exhibition booths for the first time. Breakout rooms featuring eight topics filled out the afternoon’s learning opportunities ahead of the evening festivities.

“This is a phenomenal opportunity in the offseason to continue to work on that relationship with our biggest customer, which is WisDOT,” Endres said. “The better you can know someone or build a relationship when there’s nothing going wrong, it builds a nice foundation to handle conflict when you’re in the heat of the battle during the season.”

The two-day conference concluded Friday with topics such as work zone safety, utilities, ethics, and more.