Autauga County Engineer John Mark Davis named Alabama’s 2026 Engineer of the Year

John Mark Davis’s new state honor lands on top of a job that reaches almost every part of Autauga County’s road map. At the county engineering office on West Fourth Street in Prattville, Davis oversees the system that maintains nearly 700 miles of county roads and 72 bridges and bridge culverts, including 334.62 miles of paved roads and 330.8 miles of dirt roads.

Autauga County announced on May 7 that Davis had been named the 2026 Alabama County Engineer of the Year. The recognition matters because Davis is not just a local administrator; he is also the Alabama State Director for the National Association of County Engineers, and he previously served as president of the Association of County Engineers of Alabama for 2021-2022. That puts him in a statewide circle of county engineers who deal every day with the same basic problems: worn pavement, bridge upkeep, drainage, subdivision reviews and the long wait for funding to catch up with road conditions.

For Autauga drivers, the more immediate measure of Davis’s work is not the award but the project list. The county’s FY 2026 County Transportation Plan, approved by the commission on Aug. 19, 2024, set aside $1 million for resurfacing and striping on CR-19. It also included a $450,000 project on CR-1S, a $250,000 project on Old Ridge Road, a $400,000 project on CR-33, a $150,000 bridge maintenance item at BIN #011993 on CR-69, and a $100,000 bridge maintenance item for various locations.

That plan has already translated into active bidding. On March 18, the county advertised sealed bids for Project No. RA-ACP 01-02-24, a patch, widen and resurface job on Old Ridge Road from U.S. 31 to 1.939 miles east of U.S. 31. The county commission also showed Davis seeking approval on June 17, 2025, for a joint Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application with Chambers and Elmore counties, a sign that his work stretches beyond routine maintenance into regional safety planning and outside funding.

Davis has held the Autauga County engineer job since Aug. 31, 2015, giving him more than a decade in a role that is usually noticed only when a bridge closes or a road is rough enough to feel in the steering wheel. The Alabama honor places him in a broader professional spotlight, but in Autauga County the more visible test remains simple: whether the paving, bridge repairs and storm-response work are showing up where commuters, farm traffic and school traffic actually travel.