Bill Zapalac
B.S., University of Texas at Austin, 1973
Bill earned an Architectural Engineering degree with honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973. He was selected to Chi Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi, engineering honor organizations recognizing academics and character. In 1969 he accepted membership into the Silver Spurs, a UT honorary service organization. In 1970 Bill was selected Outstanding Junior of the Architectural Engineering Department by the UT Chapter of the American Association of Architectural Engineers. In 1973 he received the Marvin Wright Achievement Award as the engineering letterman athlete with the most significant academic and athletic achievements. He attended the University of Texas on an athletic scholarship and played on Longhorn football teams in 1968, 1969 and 1970. Bill was a starter his entire collegiate career (33 games) while playing 3 different positions (and when injury occurred in 1969, he served as a backup tight end and punter) on teams that had a combined record of 30-2-1. Those teams won 3 conference championships and 2 national championships. Bill was a 3-time Academic All-Conference and a 2-time Academic All-American. He was elected one of the four captains his senior year on a team that finished 10-1 and was named to the All SWC defensive team that year as a linebacker. At the end of his athletic collegiate career, Bill was one of 13 student/athletes across the United States that won the National Football Foundation Scholar Athlete honors (one of 12 UT athletes to receive this recognition of all time) as well as receiving the NCAA post graduate scholarship for athletic/academic excellence. After his college career, Bill was drafted as the eighty-fourth selection (the fourth round) of the 1971 NFL draft; he played three years with the New York Jets from 71-73. In 2011 he was elected to the University of Texas Hall of Honor. In 2023 he was selected as a distinguished alumnus to the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Academy of UT’s School of Engineering.
In 1974 Bill began his construction career with Linbeck Construction. He worked for several firms developing his management skills. In 1980 he was promoted to upper management in a general contracting firm. Since that time, Bill has made significant contributions to the growth and profitability of several large construction companies in the Texas market. He has contributed to the completion of over 400 projects during his career. Those projects range geographically from all of the major cities in Texas as well in New Mexico, Colorado, Maryland, Virginia, and Indiana. His career includes institutional, educational, healthcare, office, retail, parking structures, interiors, industrial, civic/community, renovations and religious projects completed through the CMAR, design/build, design/assist or the bid/build process. Bill currently has over 50 years of experience in the construction industry and has developed an understanding of how this industry is affected by the Texas economic cycle. His career spans over seven decades in the central Texas construction community beginning with hourly employment of summer jobs starting at age 15. This summer work was the beginning of his interest in the construction field.
While at Zapalac/Reed Construction, Bill’s leadership has guided the construction of over 390 buildings, encompassing 26.4 million square feet of structures in the Central Texas area. Over the last 27-year period he has overseen the revenue of over 2.1 billion dollars of construction and 72% of Zapalac/Reed’s revenue has originated from repeat customers. His individual experience entails the conceptual and preliminary budgeting of projects from the early concept stage. Much of the Zapalac/Reed involvement in CMAR originates from this budgeting ability. He has transformed his firms’ operations from manual construction engineering operations into information sharing on single platforms with online cloud-based applications.
As a Longhorn, Bill is particularly proud of the work Zapalac/Reed performed in building the parking structure for the University Co-op as well as the Bevo Museum in DKR Memorial Stadium. The museum, completed for the Silver Spurs, has a Bevo "Walk of Fame" on the floor with silver plaques in the stadium’s east side lobby for each longhorn, videos featuring stories of Bevo history and touchscreen monitors with highlights of UT sports. In 2012, Zapalac/Reed provided design/build services for The University of Texas Elementary School which is a research-based demonstration school located in the heart of East Austin.
One of the more recent Zapalac/Reed project completions has been the “Block 164” project on the Breckenridge/Dell Medical School campus for the nonprofit corporation 2033 Higher Education Development Foundation, created to benefit the University of Texas Austin. This building includes 330,000 sf of professional office space with above ground and subsurface parking enclosing the east side of Waterloo Park in Austin, which is part of a healthcare transformation and the flagship of Austin’s emerging Innovation District.
Bill is active with the Longhorn Foundation, Systems Chancellor’s Council, UT School of Engineering and a life member of the Texas Exes as well as supporting the Central Texas Food Bank, Westbank Community Library, and Peoples Community Clinic. He has also assisted in the construction of several central Texas non-profit organizations.
