A writer and contributing editor for CEG since 2008, Eric Olson has worked in the news-gathering business for 45 years.
Olson grew up in the small town of Lenoir, N.C. in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he began covering sports for the local newspaper at age 18. He continued to do that for several other dailies in the area while in college at Appalachian State University. Following his graduation, he worked for, among other companies, the Winston-Salem Journal, where he wrote and edited the newspaper's real estate and special features sections for 10 years. Since 1999 he has worked as a corporate media liaison and freelance writer, in addition to his time at CEG.
He and his wife, Tara, have been happily married for almost 40 years and are the parents of two grown and successful daughters. He currently is in the employ of two dogs and three cats, a job that he dearly loves.
In 1956, four friends in Spain came together to form a company to design and build microcars for the European market. Their business, Automóviles Utilitarios Sociedad Anónima (AUSA), only produced the diminutive automobiles for five years, but the cars were noted for their comfort and the quality of their workmanship....
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When Heather Thompson and her then-partner, Brian Hux, decided to open a business together in 2010, they, like most small-business newbies, started off quite humbly....
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To serve its growing base of customers in the construction industry in eastern North Carolina, James River Equipment in January opened a hub facility in the southern suburbs of Raleigh....
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When Brian Woods decided to leave college early and start his own one-man construction service company in 2003, he began by performing one specific task for the general contractors that took a chance on him....
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Charlotte-based Blythe Construction Inc., one of the Southeast's leading heavy construction companies, recently unveiled a new piece of equipment designed to reduce the firm's carbon emissions from its paving operations in North and South Carolina....
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Just two years ago, a new company, Parman Tractor & Equipment, opened its doors to contractors in Tennessee and other parts of the South wanting a distributor of top shelf construction machinery — one that is also expert in the art of treating its customers well....
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One thing is certain about Ideal Landscaping's project at Hoover Road Park in Durham, N.C.: The Triangle company employs some of the best tools on the market to perform its grading project at the 50-acre soccer park....
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South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham visited the Mauldin Paving Products manufacturing facility in Greenville, S.C., on May 17 to discuss President Biden's proposed $2.1 infrastructure bill designed to, among other things, build better, safer roads and bridges nationwide....
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Joffrey Merrill has a cool job. Not only does he love his work, but he gets to do it outdoors amid the splendor of the southern Appalachian Mountains of North and South Carolina....
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Hillsboro may be a tiny northern Virginia community of only 120 residents, but it began a big revitalization effort in March 2020 that could be a model for how many future infrastructure projects are funded, designed and built....
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Tony Raynor is very effusive about his company's versatility and, as he likes to say, the "depth" of its subsidiaries. Tony Raynor is CEO of Sustainability Green Team (SGTM), Astatula, Fla....
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When one of America's major highways undergoes an expansion and improvement project costing hundreds of millions of dollars, chances are that a sizable number of people will be affected....
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In the United States, the use of diverging diamond interchanges (DDI) is becoming increasingly popular among state transportation departments to improve the flow of vehicle traffic where busy non-freeways intersect with interstates and other freeways....
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Lewis Barton puts a great deal of faith in the people that help make his utility construction company successful. In turn, his crews respect him and admire the way he and his management operate the firm....
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Anyone who has regularly driven around Charlotte, N.C., in the last couple of decades can attest to its seemingly never-ending growth. New skyscrapers are erected each year in the uptown, along with multi-story residential apartments and condominiums in the trendy neighborhoods nearby....
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It is now been almost nine years since contractors first began to transform the interchange at I-40 and I-77 in Statesville, N.C., 40 mi. north of Charlotte. With only an expected year-and-a-half left before the two-phased freeway project is finished, crews from two different construction companies have made quite a few upgrades to each interstate as well as several streets and roads feeding to them and the interchange....
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The practice of engineering stream and wetland restoration has been in use for thousands of years — ever since humans first realized they needed to keep their waterways healthy to drink and safe to travel upon....
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One of South Carolina's most long lasting and highly regarded companies is Lanier Construction, which, as a provider of mined materials to contractors for several decades, does business as Lanier Sand and Soil....
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The task of building Florida's mammoth Brightline Trains extension from West Palm Beach to Cocoa, then west to Orlando International Airport, is a Herculean one for any of the contractors on the project....
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North Carolina's Mecklenburg County is the state's largest in terms of population with just more than 1.1 million residents. Along with its county seat, Charlotte, Mecklenburg is one of the South's major urban centers....
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