Welcome to WDBC Board Members
WDBC Board of Directors welcomes two newly appointed member firm representatives, Wilber Chen from Parsons and David Wilkes from O’Brien & Gere.
Wilber Chen, Senior Vice President, Water Division Manager, Parsons Corporation
Wilber Chen has over 25 years of experience and is Parsons’ Senior Vice President and Construction Division Manager for water and wastewater APD and construction projects. Prior to joining Parsons, he was serving as district office level management support with Kiewit providing preconstruction, construction management, and oversight of large water/wastewater and infrastructure projects. Mr. Chen currently serves as Project Director for all Parsons’ water and wastewater related projects and as a joint venture board member on joint venture projects.
David Wilkes, PE, BCEE, Senior VP, Water Brand Leader, O’Brien & Gere
David Wilkes has more than 33 years of environmental engineering and project management experience. As a nationally-recognized water quality and treatment expert, he is experienced with many types of water quality issues and advanced water treatment technologies. He currently oversees O’Brien & Gere’s municipal water business unit.
Register for the 2016 American Water Summit
It's not too late to register! The 7th annual American Water Summit, scheduled to occur December 5 - 7, 2016, at the Hilton Miami Downtown in Miami, FL, features water leaders from all over North America sharing water industry experiences and challenges. Questions being addressed examine how the future of the North American water industry will be based on the established relationships between customers and suppliers, challenging if it should move to a new model of partnerships in order to thrive, which is a crucial question for 2016.
WDBC immediate past president Leofwin Clark is a featured private sector speaker on the panel Business Models: Assessing the Public-Private Value Proposition on Day 1 of the conference from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
There is private money waiting to wash into America’s crumbling water infrastructure. At the same time, new public funding instruments are being developed. It leaves cities grappling with how to get the best out of the two sources. Increasing pressures on cities’ finances means that both public and private funders are welcome to the table and both are showing increasingly creative ways to meet the needs of utilities.
How should utilities respond? What will be the right balance between the cost effectiveness of private sector financing and tax-free municipal funding? Can we come up with a model that will still provide the value to the private investor? Is there a way to accelerate the pace of infrastructure upgrades and new infrastructure?
In this session, we look at the fresh approaches to financing water and find out which projects are addressing this challenge and making headway in the mark.
Be sure to register today!
Learn More >>