Will Kirby
40, Transportation Sustainability Leader
HDR
Omaha

Helping improve water quality and sanitation service in Bolivia early in his career sparked Will Kirby’s passion to build community and sustainability-related projects. It also fueled his desire to boost that effort by earning a Master’s degree in Sustainable Systems Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kirby, whose first engineer-in-training job was as a transmission line engineer, says considering all the ways a project will affect a community is crucial to its success.

“If you aren’t considering impact on the environment, community and resources you have available to build, maintain or operate a project, that project is going to fail,” he says. “It’s pretty cut and dry.”

Throughout his career, Kirby has held various positions dedicated to improving the environment. He now leads development of the Omaha Climate Action Plan, which is identifying city climate risks and vulnerabilities and will include suggested actions to enhance preparedness and resiliency.

As task leader for the Sustainability Playbook for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Kirby led coordination between the client and its sustainability committee to create a playbook and matrix to further enhance operational sustainability across the organization. His performance helped HDR engage in additional agency work, including a climate resilience plan.

Kirby also was project manager of a feasibility assessment for the Douglas County landfill near Omaha. He led the team that reviewed its existing conditions and developed an analysis that included modeling deployment of solar energy production.

Kirby says the infrastructure sector faces the challenge of getting things built without creating pollution or other negative impacts on communities.

“In my perspective we have to figure out ways to get things done in a sustainable and resilient fashion while using resources we are given,” he says. “It means working closely with all stakeholders and community members who might be impacted by a project.”

Pre-planning is crucial and sometimes a project will not get past the planning stage.

“You have a lot of checks and balances on a project,” he says. “You want to make sure that the project you are building is the right project.”

When it comes to sustainability “people often have the concept that a project is automatically going to cost more money,” he says. “Sometimes that can be pretty short-sighted if they don’t consider some harder-to- quantify benefits like resilience or life cycle costs.”

Kirby says finding allies who can envision a project’s environmental benefits and provide critical information, is important.

“Trying to emphasize or maximize things that can be done [for sustainability] and getting that information to leaders is certainly big,” he says. “It makes a lot of sense or is effective to find champions who do understand or get it –so to speak—and seeing their ability to influence outcomes in sustainable development design.”

Kirby dedicates his time off work to volunteering. He participates in job shadowing and presents to elementary school students to encourage their interest in STEM. He also regularly helps interns and co-op students interested in sustainability and resilience to explore opportunities.

As an ambassador for the HDR Foundation, Kirby advocates for donations and encourages involvement and grant applications from colleagues to help spread resources to organizations they support.