Kyle Friedman has one word for being one of this year’s two 2025 Ralston Young Trenchless Achievement Award winners: Amazing. This honor was presented to him and co-winner Phill Perron during the NASTT 2025 No-Dig Show in Denver on March 30.
The Ralston Young Trenchless Achievement Award recognizes NASTT members under 36 who demonstrated excellence early in their careers by making valuable contributions to the trenchless technology industry, achieving noteworthy professional success and actively participating in NASTT.
Friedman is the Mountain West Trenchless Lead at Brierley Associates’ Denver office.
“It’s pretty amazing to win this award, especially at No Dig here in Denver,” Friedman says. “It was amazing to have my wife there to celebrate this achievement, especially with the support she gives to my career and with the time I spend away from home on projects. And it’s amazing to really be a part of this industry and NASTT. I’ve been a member of the Rocky Mountain NASTT chapter since about 2019, being actively involved and working alongside Chris Knott, Stephanie Nix-Thomas, Becky Brock, Andrea Long and countless others. To see the effort they put in makes it easier for me to want to put the same amount of effort in.”
WORKING INTO THE INDUSTRY
Like his 2025 Ralston Award co-winner Perron, Friedman didn’t intend to work in the trenchless industry — or even live in Denver, for that matter. “I’m originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and I actually kind of fell into the trenchless field,” Friedman says. “Before I started working for Brierley Associates, I was working in the Midwest doing normal foundation design, earthwork and geotechnical investigation reports.”
So how did Friedman end up in Denver? Well, his fiancée (now wife) went to graduate school in Boulder, Colorado, and wanted to stay in that state rather than living in Missouri. But what really made the difference was Friedman’s faculty adviser at the University of Missouri had taught another student who worked at Brierley Associates, “and they were looking for new hires here in Denver. My previous co-worker reached out to my adviser and ended up forwarding me the email about the job in Denver,” he said. “So that’s how I found out about Brierley, looked into it and yeah, it was a great fit.”
Friedman joined Brierley Associates in January 2018 as a staff geotechnical engineer and has worked his way up through the ranks to become Mountain West Trenchless Lead in May 2024. He credits the many different divisions at Brierley in areas such as geotechnology, trenchless and tunneling for giving him a broad base of useful experience.
“Over the years I’ve been able to be involved with all of Brierley’s various engineering sectors and work on a number of different projects,” he says. “What I really liked about trenchless was how unique it is, how I can go from one job here in Colorado with certain ground conditions to another job in Georgia and totally have to rethink how the machine needs to behave and how the ground’s going to react to a tunnel being installed, and go from there. It’s been fun to learn all these different techniques and methods that are out there, and to understand what’s happening underground when you can’t see it; especially for HDD and microtunneling.”
A VOICE FOR NASTT
Friedman has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in civil engineering with a geotechnical concentration and is a registered professional engineer in multiple states. Friedman’s work experience covers all aspects of a trenchless project, including the development of trenchless alternative analyses, creating and conducting geotechnical site investigations, preparing geotechnical data reports and geotechnical baseline reports, designing trenchless crossings and specifications, HDD alignment selections and optimizations, and making tunneling observations during construction.
In the field, Friedman has been a key member of Brierley Associates’ field team on several complex projects, including the award-winning Empire State Trail Box Tunnel project and the Lake Isabella Dam Safety Modification project.
Away from his job, Friedman has made substantial contributions to the industry, including delivering nine papers and presentations at various conferences within the trenchless and water/wastewater communities. He has also been an active volunteer within NASTT and RMNASTT since 2019, including serving as an executive board member and treasurer for the RMNASTT Chapter, and being on the No Dig 2025 planning committee.
“Kyle actively advances and advocates for NASTT’s mission in every aspect of his career,” wrote Anna Crockford (senior engineer with Brierley Associates) on Friedman’s Ralston Award nomination form. “He learns as much as possible about trenchless project success and risk mitigation while pushing the limits of current technologies. Committed to industry growth, he shares his knowledge with owners and contractors to promote awareness, understand possibilities, highlight limitations and ensure successful projects and satisfied teams.”
“Kyle plays a key role in the NASTT Rocky Mountain Regional Chapter and its annual Trenchless Elevated Conference and Clay Shoot,” added Jason Langer, general manager with Underground Infrastructure Technologies on the same form. “He is instrumental in organizing, securing participation, moderating and speaking at these events. Because of his involvement, these events provide valuable insights for trenchless contractors, engineers and owners.”
Looking back on his Ralston Award win, Friedman remains amazed. “I think it’s a big achievement in my career,” he says. “It gives me a platform to be able to promote NASTT in the Rocky Mountain region — especially to a lot of my younger co-workers to show them how to be successful in your career and how to make a real difference in what we’re doing.”
