After 10 1/2 months on the job, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Executive Karl Ishman will leave as District 11 Executive overseeing operations in Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties.

He is retiring from the $107,500-a-year position June 17, ending a 35-year PennDOT career to spend more time with his family.

PennDOT Secretary Allen D. Biehler has already named Ishman's successor -- Daniel Cessna, 31, of Churchill, presently in charge of the design unit for PennDOT District 10, which includes Butler, Indiana and Armstrong counties.

Cessna has held a variety of management positions at county and district levels since he joined the department in 1992 as an engineering intern. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in civil engineering from Penn State University and a master's degree in business education from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business.

"Dan has been one of the top performers in the state," Biehler said. "He's young, and I expect him to be there for a long time."

As District 11 executive, Cessna will oversee 1,900 miles of state-owned roads and 1,200 bridges in the three-county area. He arrives while PennDOT is in the early stages of the single, most expensive contract in the region's history -- the $93 million reconstruction of five miles of Interstate 79 between Bridgeville and the Parkway West.

PennDOT Deputy Secretary Gary Hoffman was in Collier yesterday to announce the appointment and introduce Cessna to the 800-employee District 11 engineering, maintenance and support staff.

Biehler said when he picked Ishman, then the top-rated among 11 candidates, Ishman said the District 11 executive position would probably be his last one, although he hoped to make it a longer stay. He's 54 years old.

"Karl was not able to relocate his residence, based on family considerations," Biehler said. "The drive was wearing him down and he had little time left to spend with his family" in the Oil City area, a 200-mile roundtrip commute.

He said Ishman's time at the District 11 helm, while short, has nevertheless been meaningful. While he picked new assistant engineers for design and maintenance, and while he reassigned other managers, he also fired longtime PennDOT spokesman Dick Skrinjar.

"He was a terrific breath of fresh air," Biehler said of Ishman. "He set the district in a new course in his short tenure. He outperformed my expectations."