A believer in helping others and the philosophy that “a rising tide lifts all ships,” 2026 OCA Chair Bill Luttmer is looking to promote the association’s benefits to members and also how the organization hopes to benefit the state’s heavy/highway construction industry.
Luttmer, OCA’s 91st chair, is the president of A&A Safety Inc.
Asked how the Cincinnati-based traffic management services company has benefited from its nearly 35 years of OCA membership, Luttmer mentions and expands on the association’s positives of “industry knowledge, experience and exposure,” by saying, “The opportunity to have personal relationships with your customers, competition and associate members is really unique … There is such a humility and decency in those relationships. So, to me, it’s the personal relationships that OCA promotes.”
Luttmer also doesn’t discount OCA’s working partnerships with industry, state agencies and local government. “OCA is the preeminent construction association for highway or roadwork in Ohio,” he said. “And with that comes the relationships to improve and affect change collaboratively with owners – primarily with ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation). It ranges from specs on asphalt, to bridges, to pipes, to concrete, to our world of maintenance of traffic, paint and pavement markings.”
Ironically, it was the kind of relationship that Luttmer and A&A Safety enjoys today with OCA that led them not only to business success but ultimately joining the association.
“Parr (Peterson) is the reason we joined OCA,” said Luttmer candidly. Luttmer reached out to the former president of Paul Peterson Company years prior to A&A Safety joining the association. While the initial contact was to gain information on how to grow A&A Safety, Luttmer says that relationship continues today with the now retired Peterson and his family. “I met Parr in the summer of ’90 and went to meet him to ask: ‘How do you do this?’ and, ‘How do you do that?’ Parr answered every question I asked. To this day I consider Parr a mentor; a friend; an example of how to live my life,” said Luttmer, who smiled as he talked how the Peterson household was his home away from home for more than 25 years during OCA Winter Conference time.
The busy Peterson household undoubtedly made Luttmer feel right at home.
William “Bill” Neil Luttmer was born at Cincinnati’s Good Samaritan Hospital along with his seven brothers and sisters. From the family of 10’s suburban Cincinnati home in Anderson Township, Bill found himself on an assembly line of sorts at a young age working in the family business.
William J. Luttmer, Bill’s father, founded A&A Safety in 1982 as a traffic barricade, barrel and flasher rental company. The charismatic elder Luttmer was a former homebuilder, high school teacher and two-time candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. He worked for Protection Services, one of the first companies in the Maintenance of Traffic (MOT) space. Seeing this potential growth in road safety services at the onset of construction for the U.S. Interstate System, Bill’s father formed his own company. “He came up with his own design and version of a barricade,” said Bill.
The original design of the all-steel barricade was painted white and black and had a flashing light affixed to the top. By the age of 10, Bill was proficient – along with his brothers and sisters – in assembling, painting and soldering circuits and flashing stems with lights for the barricades. “We would paint them and assemble them in our garage and on our driveway,” he said, smiling at the memories of paint splotches on the family’s split rail fence and the home’s exterior brick. And when the weather turned cold, A&A Safety’s assembling moved next door to his grandparents’ basement.
Luttmer attended Bowling Green State University, where he graduated with a political science degree. Admitting he was unsure of his career path, he took both law school (LSAT) and graduate school (GRE) admission tests, and while preparing for the test then awaiting results, he stayed busy working. “You always had a job,” Luttmer said of growing up in the 1980s. “I was working (at A&A Safety) by day and bussing tables at night … It was then that I started to embrace what we were doing as a family company.”
With A&A Safety using family and friends as the labor force, Bill said it was a time when you did a little of everything, and he found it “definitely gratifying … Even to this day it’s satisfying to see the results of your work – whether it is finishing what you were assembling or building; taking items to the job; or making a customer satisfied. I realized there was real opportunity, and it was something I could get into.”
In the late 1980s, A&A Safety, which established its name so it would appear at the front of the phonebook, had four employees and was looking to expand services. The first shop was an unheated bus garage four miles from home. Luttmer, however, quickly adds that whenever anything needed done in a heated environment, the materials were shuttled back to the warmth of his grandparents’ basement. “At that point of time, we started to look at getting into a little larger scale and scope, and were wondering ‘How do we take the next step?’” That’s when Luttmer was urged by his father to reach out to Parr Peterson of Paul Peterson Company – a company that started in guardrail construction in 1932.
“Parr is the one that said, ‘If you want to do this, I can help you with the what to dos, but you need to do the work to get to know the customers, the industries and all the rest,’” Luttmer said.
Over the years, A&A Safety has done the rest – and now has 75 year-round and more than 250 in-season employees. Along with its Cincinnati headquarters, the company has branch offices in Beavercreek and Cleveland and is prequalified to work in nine states. A&A Safety features sales, rental and contracting services and provides product offerings such as attenuators, barrier walls and message boards, LED warning solutions, portable traffic signals and traffic-control devices. Company services include decorative crosswalks, electric sign repair, event traffic control, MOT, pavement marking and reflective marker installation, sign installation and more.
“One of the things that we have been doing more and more recently are with high-friction surfaces – which are to prevent roadway departures; that is one of the areas that we see opportunity,” said Luttmer, who adds that keeping up with technology remains top of mind for company leaders. A&A Safety is also working on its offerings in intrusion and stop devices to assist in crowd control at large public gatherings.
Also top of mind, Luttmer said A&A Safety is keeping up with the industry’s change from National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) to the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) standards. “… The specifications in our world are changing. Our industry is regularly evolving and improving based on changing safety standards,” he said of the upcoming 2029 standard changes.
Along with Luttmer, who became company president in 2010, A&A Safety’s leadership includes: Northeast Ohio Region Area Manager Ray Brink; Dayton Office Branch Manager Tim Racer; Cincinnati Office Branch Managers Daniel Luehrmann and Stoney Luttmer. These employees and the rest of the company’s leadership team account for more than 200 years of experience. Nearly one-third of A&A Safety’s employees have been with the company for more than 10 years.
In addition to the long list of company veterans making it feel like a family company, there has also been a steady list of Luttmers working at A&A Safety. Including oldest son Stoney and Luehrmann, a son-in-law, each of Bill and wife Lori’s seven children have worked, or are “scheduled” to work, part-time at the company – which so far has included Cecilia “CeCe”, Isabella “Bella”, St. Cyr and Adriana. Sophia will work at A&A Safety this summer and Carter, the youngest son, will be on staff in the coming years.
The Luttmer children should feel fortunate they were and will be on the company payroll – which can’t be said for wife and mother Lori. Bill and Lori, who married in 1991, met when A&A Safety personnel were on call to do a little of everything. “At the time,” Bill said smiling, “there were four full-time employees – myself, my dad, my brother and another guy. In that day, you had a pager and you did everything … When the flashing lights on the barrels would go out, you had to change the batteries; every 50 feet; every three weeks.” Bill said Lori soon learned that if the couple wanted to “hang out” she would be driving a truck. “She would drive the truck while I sat on the tailgate and would drive barrel to barrel to barrel and change batteries. It was wonderful.”
Celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary in January, Luttmer said the early support shown by his future wife stands true today not only among the couple’s seven children and five grandchildren, but with his work with A&A Safety and OCA. “I’m not here where I am today without her love, support and understanding …”
In addition to taking Peterson’s advice on growing A&A Safety, Luttmer said he also followed his advice to join OCA – which he did in 1992. In his more than 30 years of involvement in OCA, Luttmer has – and still – serves on the Southwest Ohio Chapter’s Board, having served as chair in 2008; remains active on the statewide Spec Committee – specifically working in the 600 Series that deals with traffic control and MOT; serves on the OCA Board; and more. Along with serving as 2026 Chair, Luttmer’s dedication to OCA was rewarded in 2023 when received the Past Presidents Service Award. It seemed fitting that Luttmer received the honor that year with Aaron Peterson, of Paul Peterson Co. – and Parr’s nephew.
Along with service to OCA, Luttmer also enjoys the social aspect of the association. A regular attendee of OCA’s Winter Conference and Annual Conventions, he said, “The opportunity to be with folks in our industry in a non-work setting is really, really attractive – because it’s fun! You have the opportunity to get to know someone at a deeper level. You need that in this world – because we need each other. You’re going to have good jobs and bad jobs; you’re going to have good situations and bad situations; you’re going to have things that arise unexpectantly – and it does make a difference to have a deeper relationship with vendors, customers and competition because things happen.”
Luttmer, and A&A Safety are also active with the American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) and its Ohio Chapter. A trade association, ATSSA spotlights the importance of the roadway safety industry and the importance of transportation focusing on reducing injuries and saving lives.
With his dedication to both OCA and the ATSSA-Ohio Chapter, it’s no surprise Luttmer is making work zone safety an important part of his year as OCA Chair. He pointed toward a current bill in the Ohio Legislature – Ohio House Bill 82. It proposes stricter penalties for traffic violations in construction zones, including mandatory safety courses and potentially classifying offenses as higher-level misdemeanors.
“I really do want to bring attention and focus on worker safety and worker safety legislation,” said Luttmer. “I think that is an area that is sorely lacking and lagging in Ohio. This is an opportunity to really bring emphasis, recognition and exposure to that.”
Just as others have assisted him along the way, Bill Luttmer hopes to do the same this year as OCA Chair – with the ultimate hope that the association can lift the entire industry and make it safer.
OCA Executive Committee
The 2026 OCA Executive Committee members:
Chair: Bill Luttmer, A&A Safety Inc.
Vice-Chair: Tom Frantz, Eagle Bridge Co.
Treasurer: Cole Graham, Shelly & Sands Inc.
Executive Committee Member: Matt Malone, Kurtz Bros. Co.
Immediate Past Chair: Mary Fantozzi, J.D. Williamson Construction Co.