Winner of the 2021 Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award, Michigan State University College of Engineering
Douglas J. Peters is nationally recognized as one of the construction industry's most innovative and visionary leaders. He has provided business and civil engineering leadership on more than $1 billion in self-perform construction projects across the U.S. over the past 29 years.
He oversees all operations for Christman Constructors, Inc., The Christman Company's self-perform affiliate. For more than 125 years, Christman has specialized in concrete and carpentry trades. Under Peters' watch, the expertise has grown to include demolition, earthwork projects connected with excavation and embankment operations, utilities, and mass timber construction.
A graduate of Lansing Everett High School, Peters began at the MSU College of Engineering in 1989 and was a member of the Chi Epsilon National Civil Engineering Society. One day after graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1992, he was commissioned into the Regular U.S. Army as a Distinguished Military Graduate of the Spartan Army ROTC Battalion, Engineers, second lieutenant. He was assigned to the Sixth Engineer Battalion, Sixth Infantry Division (L) in Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
He served as platoon leader and company executive officer in the 47th Engineer Company. His unit's mission was to provide mobility, counter-mobility and survivability direct support to the infantry maneuver elements in the division. He also led two separate U.S. Army construction deployments to the central Pacific islands of Kwajalein Atoll, Johnston Atoll and Tarawa. During his service, he completed the U.S. Army Airborne School, the Scout Platoon Leaders Course, and the Engineer Officer Basic Course.
After serving with the U.S. Army, he worked for a national concrete construction services firm and earned a master's degree in project management from Northwestern University's Department of Civil Engineering.
Peters joined Christman in 2001 as a project manager, was promoted to director of concrete operations in 2007, to vice president in 2009, to executive vice president in 2014. He was promoted to president of Christman Constructors, Inc., in 2016. Notably, he is a Christman Way Cornerstone Award Recipient, the highest internal recognition presented to one individual each year for effort, attitude and achievement in representing the company's core values. Peters is also a member of Christman Enterprises and Christman Constructors, Inc., board of directors.
A superior technical background, project management skills, and focus on data-driven business solutions have contributed to the success of the projects under his leadership. To address an industrywide challenge, Peters pioneered the development of CopperWorksSM, a patent-pending human resource leveling iOS application which earned the Associated General Contractors of America 2020 Innovation Award. Since his promotion to president of Christman Constructors, Inc., annual revenues have doubled to nearly $100 million.
Peters spearheaded and contributed to the completion of multimillion-dollar projects for several of the country's premier companies, nonprofits, universities, and municipalities, including work on behalf of Pfizer, Accident Fund Insurance Company of America, the University of Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield, McCormick Place in Chicago, the Detroit Metropolitan Airport Midfield Terminal, and hundreds of projects at Michigan State University, including the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), and the STEM Teaching and Learning Facility, which is the first facility in Michigan built with mass timber for its load-bearing structure.
Recent career highlights include the completion of the Detroit Pistons Performance Center in Detroit, which was selected by the Construction Association of Michigan as the 2020 Project of the Year; Apex Clean Energy in Charlottesville, Virginia, the state's largest mass timber structure; and, Pfizer's B541 Warehouse Expansion project in Kalamazoo that received the Golden Trowel Award in 2017 for achieving the highest industry standards in superflat concrete floor placement, including the setting of two different world records for Fmin longitudinal flatness and Fmin transverse flatness.
Peters is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Michigan and Commonwealth of Virginia. His professional interest and his most significant experiences are in the construction of massive concrete structures primarily for nuclear particle shielding, and massive foundations that require unique construction and engineering practices including concrete formwork design and mitigation of the effect of thermal stresses caused by the heat of hydration during the concrete curing process.
He is a current voting member of the American Concrete Institute's Concrete Formwork 347 and Mixing and Transporting 304, and sits as an associate member of Mass Concrete 207. He is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Society of American Military Engineers, and the American Society of Concrete Contractors.
He has two children. His son, Douglas J. Peters Jr., M.D., holds two MSU bachelor's degrees, biochemistry and molecular biology (with honors), and economics, and graduated in May 2021 from MSU's College of Human Medicine. He is now in his first year of an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His daughter, Kendall J. Peters, is a Grand Valley State University graduate with a bachelor's degree in economics and minor in applied statistics (Cum laude).