Vice President, Projects & Dam Safety

Responsibilities

• Own the company’s large-scale capital deployment, accountable for the outcomes, not just the process.
• Develop and execute long-term strategy for capital improvements, dam safety, civil asset management, and project delivery as the platform scales.
• Build a culture of first-principles thinking, extreme ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement where inherited assumptions about cost, schedule, and process are continuously challenged.
• Create and drive new tools, data, and technology across project management, civil engineering, and dam safety.
• Serve as a principal advisor to the CEO and executive team on infrastructure investment, risk, and capital planning.
• Provide executive leadership to the project organization delivering capital projects, major maintenance, and strategic initiatives across the fleet.
• Deliver projects safely, faster, and at lower installed cost than the industry norm through new technology, less dumb requirements, removing process friction and indecision but never by cutting quality or safety corners.
• Own portfolio prioritization, capital forecasting, resource planning, and project governance, and set consistent, high standards for execution methodology, controls, contracting, and risk management.
• Make sound decisions quickly with incomplete and uncertain information and create an environment where the team can do the same with confidence.
• Hold engineering consultants, contractors, and major vendors to clear, demanding performance expectations.
• Ensure lessons learned move rapidly back into how we deliver the next project.
• Serve as the executive accountable for the company’s dam safety program and civil engineering activities across the hydroelectric fleet.
• Ensure full compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local dam safety regulations and industry standards, including FERC and state dam safety agencies.
• Oversee dam safety surveillance, inspections, Potential Failure Mode Analyses, instrumentation programs, Emergency Action Planning, risk assessments, and remediation initiatives.
• Hold an uncompromising standard on safety margins and factors of safety.
• Present to Board of Directors, executive leaders, the company on strategy, status, and trajectory of programs.
• Partner closely with other executive leaders to prioritize investments that improve reliability, availability, productivity, and risk reduction.
• Coordinate with Regulatory and Legal teams on permitting, compliance obligations, and regulatory commitments.
• Partner with Finance on capital budgeting, forecasting, and financial performance management.
• Recruit, develop, and retain a highly accountable, high-performing technical and project organization.
• Set clear, demanding expectations and hold people accountable to them, while giving them the ownership to move with velocity.
• Build succession depth and organizational capability for a company that will be materially larger in a few years.
• Lead geographically dispersed teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a related science discipline required; advanced degree and/or professional engineering licensure (PE) valued.
• 8+ years in a relevant, capital-intensive industry (utility / power, infrastructure, high-tech manufacturing, aerospace, defense, automotive, or heavy industrial).
• 5+ years leading multidisciplinary technical and project teams.
• Track record managing large capital portfolios and complex infrastructure projects.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through organizational complexity at speed, balancing technical, financial, operational, and regulatory demands.
• Infrastructure leadership experience is strongly preferred. An exceptional leader from an adjacent, safety-critical, high-stakes field will also be seriously considered.
• Tenacious. You are driven by hard, meaningful problems, not by titles or comfort. This role demands long hours and intensity, this is part of building something that matters. Extraordinary results require extraordinary effort.
• Curious. You learn a domain fast and reason from fundamentals. You ask why before you accept how.
• Agile. The world is changing faster today than it was yesterday, and it will change faster tomorrow. Comfort with rapid change and priority shifts is critical.
• Optimistic. Facing tough challenges with optimism and bias towards action is critical.