Lifetime Achievement Award
2025 Recipient
Download High-ResJason Benson, executive director of the Metro Flood Diversion Authority, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for his long-term service to transportation as a county engineer and as a leader in the ND Association of County Engineers. During his time as Cass County engineer, Benson was involved in not only planning and maintaining the county’s infrastructure, but in disaster response and recovery and in leading flood fighting efforts for Cass County for more than a decade. With the ND Association of County Engineers, he served on numerous committees and served as president of the association in 2018. Benson was named Engineer of the Year in 2021 and his expertise and guidance to counties was instrumental in moving county road departments forward in innovation and efficiency.
In early 2024, Benson was named executive director for the Metro Flood Diversion Authority, where he provides leadership and management for the $3.2 billion Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Project. He joined the Cass County Highway Department in 2000 and was named Cass County engineer in 2011. He managed more than 630 miles of paved and gravel roads and 560 bridges. Benson also served at the operational and planning level with FEMA disaster response, working with post disaster recovery and flood plain mapping after multiple flood events. He served as the Cass County lead in flood plain remapping for the Western Cass Flood Insurance Study and the Fargo-Moorhead Area Flood Diversion physical map revision. Benson served as a member of the White House group reviewing the regulatory burdens on transportation projects and provided testimony regarding the regulatory challenges of Waters of the United States as defined in U.S. federal regulations.
Benson served on numerous technical teams and committees for the Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Council of Governments, the Red River Basin Commission, the ND Department of Transportation, the ND Local Technical Assistance Program, the ND Association of County Engineers, the ND Association of Counties, and the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute.
Benson has 36 years of military service with the U.S. Army and the Minnesota Army National Guard, where he is a brigadier general and currently serves as the assistant division commander for the 34th Infantry Division. His overseas deployments include missions in Kuwait, Iraq, Macedonia, Kosovo, Germany, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He is a licensed professional engineer in North Dakota and holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from NDSU, a master’s degree in management from the University of Mary, and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. He has 36 years of military service with the active-duty Army and the Minnesota Army National Guard. He is currently a brigadier general. Benson and his wife, Julie, have three children, Seth, Nicholas and Emma, who are all in currently in the U.S. Army.