Ethanol industry veteran Rowland Nofsinger will retire from Burns & McDonnell Dec. 31, after spending nearly 20 years with the company. Nofsinger joined Burns & McDonnell in 1983 when the firm purchased The C.W. Nofsinger Company, now called the Process & Industrial Group (P&I).

Nofsinger's father started The C.W. Nofsinger Company in 1950, and Rowland got involved in 1975 after spending 10 years working in the bakery/frozen foods business. At the time, most of Nofsinger's work was in the chemical and petroleum refining business and Rowland helped the company expand its market to include the design of food chemicals/ingredients facilities.

Nofsinger also helped the company enter the ethanol plant design and construction business. Over the last 20 years, the company has been involved with a number of ethanol projects, including Nebraska Energy, Chief Ethanol, Farmland Industries, and Williams BioEnergy (formerly pekin Energy Company).

Nofsinger continues to help market bio-processing, food and chemical processing projects and hopes to stay involved after his retirement to ensure the success of a contract currently in the works.

"I'm really going to miss visiting clients, building strategies and going after business," he says. "I'm very pleased to know that the Process & Industrial Group has great leadership going into the future."

Over the years, Nofsinger has been involved in a number of first-of-a-kind projects involving various proprietary technologies serving the chemical, petroleum refining, food ingredient and consumer food industries.

"These types of projects are what really distinguish Burns & McDonnell from its competition and I've enjoyed being a part of that," he said.