Brian Schatz, 33
Plumbing and fire protection engineer at AKF Group
Brian Schatz can’t help but mention his 1,500-foot-tall achievement when he and his wife drive past Manhattan.
“My wife just shakes her head every time we drive by the city when I point out and say, ‘Oh, look, there’s my building,’ ” Schatz laughed. “My favorite part I’d say about the stuff I do is seeing that finished product. I know that that’s something that’ll be there, that I can always look at and be proud of for my entire career and even beyond.”
Schatz’s sense of ownership over the Central Park Tower isn’t misplaced. The Brooklyn native was one of the engineers on the multibillion-dollar, mixed-use high-rise completed in 2020. Schatz worked on the Midtown project for over five years, starting in 2014 soon after joining AKF Group as a plumbing and fire protection engineer.
After initially studying chemical engineering at Northwestern University, Schatz soon opted for mechanical instead. He was always fascinated by how things work, he said, and, though he never envisioned a career as a plumbing engineer, that fascination eventually led to Schatz’s professional calling.
These days, Schatz is working on some college residences on the Upper East Side, decarbonizing the buildings via new heat pump systems for hot water, a new technology for plumbing systems. Once one of the youngest sitting board members of the New York City chapter of the American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE), Schatz stepped away from the board earlier this year.
As for what’s next, Schatz said that while he doesn’t want to stray too far from design, he feels he’s at the tipping point of project management, building relationships with project partners to make designs as collaborative and efficient as possible.
“I’ve seen design projects go wrong where you have an architect, an engineer and a developer, and they’re all butting heads and everyone’s trying to point a finger,” Schatz said. “But building those relationships helps from a design aspect, too, because now we can all work together to figure out what we actually need. Let’s try to figure out for everybody’s best interest how to make this work.”
