About the George A. Fox Conference
UCA, a division of SME holds this annual conference in recognition of George A. Fox's accomplishments in tunneling and underground construction. This conference helps industry professionals learn from the challenges and opportunities facing them today.
Fox the Visionary
During his more than 50-year career, Mr. Fox played lead roles in the planning, design, and management of 70 major public works projects valued in excess of $61 billion. While millions of New York City’s residents have benefited from his projects, few have ever seen Mr. Fox’s work, which mainly consists of elaborate underground tunneling.
His crowning achievement was his engineering and construction work for New York City’s Third Water Tunnel – the largest capital construction project in the City’s history and the largest tunneling project in North America. Widely hailed as a modern engineering marvel when the first stage was opened in 1998, construction of the 60-mile water tunnels some 600 feet below New York City began in 1970. Completion is expected in 2020.
Mr. Fox also earned praise as an educator. He was a former Chairman of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where he graduated in 1940. For more than a decade, he taught a course for seniors there that focused on the realities of being a civil engineer. In 1996, The Cooper Union honored him with its first “Builder of the City Award” for lifetime contributions to the construction of New York City’s infrastructure.
About the George A. Fox Conference
The conference began in 2000 as a regional conference title “Tunneling in New York … It’s Different” and attracted more than 200 people. The event was held at the McGraw-Hill Building and featured George Fox as the keynote speaker. Fox, who passed away in 2001, was the former president of Grow Tunneling, a company heavily involved in New York City tunneling including major portions of the City Tunnel No. 3. The conference was renamed the George A. Fox Conference in his honor in 2002.
The conference was not held in 2001 and shifted to the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2002, where it has been held on an annual basis ever since. The Fox Conference is traditionally held on the Tuesday before The Moles Awards dinner, held the last Wednesday in January.