UBC awards local man civil engineering award
As the man behind Dilworth Quaility Homes, the six-laning of Highway 97 and the bobsleigh, luge and ski-jump venues at the Vancouver Olympics, Mike Jacobs has been awarded one of UBC’s highest honours.
Jacobs received the UBC Applied Science Dean’s Medal of Distinction for his many contributions to civil engineering since graduating from the Vancouver campus with a bachelor’s degree in the discipline in 1985.
After university, Jacobs worked for 18 months in the engineering department of the City of Vancouver.
He then headed off to prestigious Stanford University in California to earn a master’s degree in construction management in 1988.
Jacobs soon joined the family business as project manager for Dilworth Mountain Estates and eventually became president and CEO of Kelowna-based Emil Anderson Construction.
Dilworth is a division is Emil Anderson, the firm Jacobs’ great-grandfather started more than 80 years ago in Fort William, Ont.
The road-and-bridge building and utility contracting firm moved to Kelowna in 1988 to diversify into subdivision development and home building with Dilworth Mountain Estates.
Generally, Emil Anderson puts in roads and servicing for neighbourhoods, but saw the opportunity to do it all with Dilworth.
Since then, Dilworth Quality Homes has built 1,500 single-family, townhouse and condominium homes on the mountain, which has become one of Kelowna’s most desirable addresses. Jacobs is also a past-president of the Okanagan chapter of the Urban Development Institute, pastchairman of the B.C. Road Builders’ Association, past-chariman of the Kelowna Catholic School Council and the building chairman for the recently completed St. Joseph Elementary addition.
He also supports his alma mater through the Jacobs Family Bursary and contributions to the Engineering and Management Building and Civil Engineering Lab.
The support has also spread to UBC’s Kelowna campus, where Jacobs sits on the Industry and Alumni Advisory Committee, speaks at student and industry events, funds a civil engineering bursary and co-funds a post-tensioned steel bridge columns research project.
All this work and volunteering has kept Jacobs busy for the past 30 years.
Last year, Jacobs, 56, gave up the president title at Emil Anderson Construction, but remains CEO.
“I’ve made a conscious effort to act like a CEO and be more strategic and less hands on,” he said. “My life is more balanced as a result.” As a result, he’s travelling more with his wife, Kim.