Lifetime Achievement Award
2023 Recipient
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High-ResDale Heglund
Dale Heglund will receive the UGPTI's Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes his life-long passion for improving transportation through innovative products, methodologies, and education within the state and nationally.
Heglund has dedicated his more than 45-year career to improving transportation. He began his career with his family's northern Minnesota dirt construction business, learning construction from the ground up with a shovel and a backhoe.
From 2014 to his retirement earlier this year, Heglund was director of the North Dakota Local Technical Assistance Program where he led outreach and training programs aimed at state, county, and local professionals in the transportation construction industry. He was an advocate of collaboration at all levels and promoted the vision of one transportation system rather than a collection of interconnected local networks. With that vision he worked with local leaders in creating a more efficient and safer roadway network. Heglund assisted in creating the Northern Tribal Technical Assistance Program at UGPTI to help integrate tribal transportation more effectively into the region's transportation system.
Heglund is a passionate advocate of life-long learning. He has helped develop courses in leadership and professional development aimed at workers in all levels of the industry. He has been a featured speaker and presenter at numerous transportation seminars and conferences.
Before joining UGPTI, Heglund was the North Dakota sales engineer for Cretex Concrete Products. Before that, he spent 15 years with the North Dakota Department of Transportation, first as a transportation engineer and then as assistant district engineer in Dickinson.
Heglund earned his B.S. in civil engineering from the University of North Dakota and is also a graduate of the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce Leadership Development program. He is a registered North Dakota Professional Engineer and Professional Land Surveyor. He is past president of the North Dakota Society of Professional Engineers and the North Dakota chapter of the American Public Works Association. He served as continuing education committee member of the ND Society of Professional Land Surveyors and was vice president of the North American Stormwater and Erosion Control Association-North Dakota.
Heglund is a member of the Order of the Engineer and a charter member of the Central Dacotah Section of the American Society of Highway Engineers. He has been recognized by the ND Society of Professional Engineers with the Bruce Nelson Award and by the ND Association of County Engineers with the Friends of NDACE Award.
Dale and his wife, Jennifer, live in Fergus Falls, MN.
