Amy Trahey’s Relentless Pursuit of Accountability in the Face of Tragedy, Complacency, and a High-Stakes Industry
Amy Trahey, P.E., founder of Great Lakes Engineering Group, understands that infrastructure is a promise. Every bridge or dam represents an agreement between the engineer and the public that the structure will hold. Her career has been shaped by that belief and the knowledge that technical precision is inseparable from human consequence.
The first bridge Trahey ever loved did not belong to her. It was found across the Straits of Mackinac, five miles of suspension steel stretching between peninsulas. As a child on the ferry to Mackinac Island, she watched it with a deep reverence. That structure, bold and immovable against the horizon, became the calling and catalyst for her engineering career.
Her childhood, however, was not without hardship. Home, Trahey recalls, was anchored by a single mother, whose strength and resilience shaped everything that followed. As her mother shielded two daughters from the weight of financial strain and an unstable family dynamic, Trahey grew up mirroring those values of grit and responsibility. “I watched my mom choose dignity over security. She tried to make it work because that’s what you were told to do, but the moment she realized her children’s well-being was at risk, she drew the line. That refusal to accept less than what’s right, that’s in my DNA,” Trahey shares.
Trahey notes how the community filled the spaces where resources could not. Diverse classrooms introduced her to classmates whose lives looked very different from her own, shaping an early understanding of empathy and shared humanity. “You meet people, and you realize everyone is carrying something,” she says. “It’s easy to be kind. It’s free to be kind, and it can change the trajectory of someone’s day, maybe even their life.”
Driven by the ambition embedded in her as a child, Trahey chose a demanding engineering program in Michigan. Being the first in her family to attend college with a full scholarship fueled her purpose further. The knowledge shaped her analytical instincts and deepened her fascination with structural systems. Bridges, dams, foundations, and hydraulics, every discipline, she notes, culminated in a holistic understanding of how infrastructure stands and why it fails. That understanding strengthened her ambition even more.
“I didn’t want to design a small piece of something,” she says. “I wanted to understand the soil, the loads, the water, the materials. I wanted to leave my whole thumbprint on a structure and know exactly how and why it would stand.”
In 2000, with $5,000 and a laptop capable of running CAD software to create complex bridge designs, Trahey founded Great Lakes Engineering Group, specializing in inspections, underwater evaluations, and infrastructure integrity. Her expertise, she highlights, eventually brought her full circle in 2012, when her company conducted inspection work on the Mackinac Bridge. In 2019, she was appointed to the Mackinac Bridge Authority, where she chaired the finance committee.
However, those professional accomplishments would soon be eclipsed by an unfathomable loss. Trahey’s husband of 23 years, Brian A. Trahey, tragically passed away during an underwater dam inspection in Allegan County, Michigan. The grief, she recalls, fractured every dimension of her life. “The last five years have been no less than a storm. I was in denial the first year, then clinical depression hit, and then PTSD followed,” she shares. The challenge of guiding her two sons through their own pain of losing their father demanded strength she did not know she possessed.
That loss, Trahey notes, was tied directly to the profession she loved.
“The industry touches lives in ways people don’t always see,” she says. “When something goes wrong in our field, it’s not theoretical. Families change forever. I’ve lived that reality, and it reinforced everything I already believed about accountability.” The frustrations she had long carried about inconsistent oversight and complacency within parts of the industry intensified into purpose.
She began advocating more openly about professional and regulatory responsibilities and ethical discipline. Her work became rooted in reformation as she demanded stronger enforcement mechanisms. “If you are entrusted with public safety, that responsibility is sacred,” she says. “Licenses mean something. Standards mean something. We cannot treat shortcuts as harmless. Every bolt, every calculation, every dive has a human consequence attached to it.”
Carrying that belief into Great Lakes Engineering Group, Trahey highlights how the culture is codified in five core values: integrity when no one is watching, a positive can-do mindset, commitment to quality and safety, exceeding expectations, and being humbly confident. “I hire, fire, and reward around those values,” she explains. “We’re technical experts. We can figure anything out, especially together.”
Now, a new 25-year plan has replaced the one she once shared with her husband. Expansion into Florida, deeper roots in Michigan, and continued leadership in structural inspections signal strategic ambition. Beneath the growth metrics, she seeks to reshape industry conversations so that safety is not compromised by complacency or convenience.
“I look at a challenge as an opportunity to innovate. I won’t allow hardship to change who I am at my core. It can refine me, and it can strengthen my resolve, but it doesn’t get to redefine my character,” she states.
Where infrastructure conversations often revolve around budgets and timelines, voices like Trahey reframe it in terms of lives and legacies, reminding an industry that integrity and accountability are not optional. And in that spirit, Amy Trahey continues her work, determined to ensure that no family bears preventable loss where diligence could have made the difference.
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