By: Jared Putnam
Staff Writer
Brian Burch has spent almost all of his professional life focused on North Carolina’s roads.
Along the way, the Clay County native traveled a career path that has taken him near the top of the N.C. Department of Transportation.
Burch was appointed to the position of Western Deputy Chief Engineer in late February, effectively placing him in the No. 2 position in the state among career employees. The role puts him in charge of direction construction, maintenance and project delivery programs across North Carolina’s seven western highway divisions.
“My heart is in western North Carolina,” Burch said. “It means something to know that people get in their vehicles and go to work, school, the hospital, or go to watch their kids play ball and they get out on our roads. It contributes to a good quality of life and it’s been a fulfilling career, for sure.”
Burch, 50, said he felt like he had made it to a point in his career where he would be satisfied for a long time in February 2000, when he became county maintenance engineer for Clay and Macon counties. Ironically, it ended up being one of his shortest roles.
“I was in that position for about eight months,” Burch said with a laugh. “Being a person of faith, I know God has a plan and certainly had a plan for me.”
Burch has occupied almost a dozen different roles during his more than 27-year tenure with the department, including a handful that have been in the same position but in a different office. His latest position makes him a sort of liaison within an agency that includes about 80,000 miles of highways, 9,000 employees and a $5-billion-dollar annual operating budget.
“You’ve got a large program, a lot of projects, and a lot of different areas of responsibilities,” Burch said. “I guess my biggest role is assisting the seven western divisions, which go from Orange County, Chapel Hill and come west.
“I work with those division engineers on their projects and programs to make sure we’re doing things consistently across the state. I also get involved with the legislature on new laws they’re considering, and with the funding of the department and how that will impact our operations.”
A 1988 graduate of Hayesville High School, Burch went on to graduate from North Carolina State University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. He has been licensed as a professional engineer since 1997.
Burch still lives in Hayesville with his wife, Kelly and their three daughters, twins Alyson and Emma, 23, students at Philadelphia College of Medicine in Georgia and Gracie, 20, a junior at UNC Charlotte.
“Anytime you get in a position like this, other people in your family have to make sacrifices and my wife has certainly done that,” Burch said. “Kelly, she does it all. She’s remarkable.”
Burch also volunteers as an assistant coach with the same Hayesville High football team where he was a member during his own high school days. He said the lessons he learned from football have lasted throughout his professional life, as have the ones from his family and the community as a whole.
“I’ve been blessed to grow up in Clay County,” Burch said. “Growing up in a community where people know you is special, and having parents who lived the right way, doing the right thing, living their faith. A lot of people don’t have that.”
Burch first became familiar with the DOT during a summer in college spent working for their district office in Asheville. He joined the department full-time in the summer of 1993, less than a year after graduating from N.C. State. In between, he spent nine months working for a private firm in Raleigh while he waited for the DOT hiring cycle to open for the transportation engineering associates program.
After nearly three decades of rising through the ranks, Burch said he hopes to bring a perspective to the department that
is somewhat different than what they’ve had in the past. He noted that it is unusual for his level of position to be staffed by someone from the western part of the state.
“The department and the state of North Carolina have been great to me,” Burch said. “I don’t know that I could ever repay them for the opportunities and the career they’ve given me. And they essentially gave me a career in this field that allowed me to live in my hometown, which is very unusual for anyone in engineering.”