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David B Brand Safety Award

CONGRATULATIONS to the 2023 "David P. Brand Safety Award" Recipient                 Joe Gustafson, Washington County, MN.

Nominations for 2024 will open in the 4th Quarter 2024

NACE—along with all our members and partner organizations—continue to keep local road safety in the forefront of our mission. Beginning at the NACE 2017 Annual Conference, we awarded the first ever David P. Brand Safety Award to Dave.

The award recognizes an individual who has followed in Dave's footsteps, having a positive influence on improving safety on the local, regional, state and national levels. The award is considered a life-time achievement award, recognizing an individual's efforts to join forces with other organizations to build partnerships with the goal of improving safety performance and eliminating fatalities and serious injuries.

Accordingly since it considers life-time achievements and not discreet projects as such, the Safety Award may not be awarded every year.

The new award’s criteria and guidelines have been developed jointly by the NACE Safety and Awards Committees.

NACE then-President Brian Stacy, PE, announced the safety award as a primary initiative. “A top priority for NACE continues to be local road safety,” said Brian. “To help raise its awareness, we’re initiating a David P. Brand Safety Award to recognize an individual who is dedicated to keeping our citizens and road crews safe. Someone like Dave who makes a difference at the national level, combining a dynamic mix of sound science, proven engineering principles, as well as people skills.”

Throughout his career, Dave was a champion of local road safety on the national level. He was one of, if not the, most revered local highway safety advocates.  Dave was always everyone's first choice to serve in an advisory capacity on this issue.

Dave was Madison County Engineer (Ohio) and Northeast Vice President for NACE.  He was honored in 2013 by FHWA Deputy Administrator Greg Nadeau for his work on the Every Day Counts (ECD) initiative. Specifically, Dave was recognized for his success on the Safety Edge program, for which he led the 3 year process involving federal, state and local stakeholders. Dave’s insights in local practices were instrumental to developing the outreach materials for local agencies.

Dave represented NACE on numerous national roadway safety initiatives, including the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS), the National Local Technical Assistance Program Association (NLTAPA) Roadway Safety Working Group, the Every Day Counts (EDC) Safety Edge Team, Toward Zero Deaths (TZD), and the National Center for Rural Road Safety.

Award's General Guidelines

1. Discussion of the nominee’s application or involvement in safety programs, policies, practices or infrastructure that improve the safety of our highway and local road system.

2. Highway safety partners know that their individual efforts are effective when they collaborate with each other, join forces to attack a particular problem or problem spot from multiple directions, and take advantage of each other’s experiences and knowledge.  Discuss the nominee’s efforts to build local, regional, state or national partnerships to improve safety performance while striving to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our highways and local road systems.

3. Discussion of the nominee’s dedication to raise awareness of safety initiatives and how they will benefit the public.

4. Leadership or service on local, state or national road safety committees or organizations.

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