Wastewater Project Planning and Delivery Section Manager

The Section Manager for Project Planning & Delivery (PPD) holds a uniquely pivotal leadership role within WTD, one that spans the entire lifecycle of capital delivery and connects long-term system strategies to day-to-day implementation. This role stewards how WTD plans, designs, builds, and hands over major infrastructure investments, guiding work that begins with long-range system planning and continues through design, portfolio, program and project management, asset management, construction, and ultimately handover to Operations.

Because WTD's multi-billion-dollar and essential to regional public health and environmental protection, the PPD Section Manager serves as the integrator who ensures that capital delivery is strategic, risk-informed, technically sound, and aligned with regulatory and financial commitments. The role’s reach across eight specialized units, along with its close partnership with Operations and Maintenance, Finance, Environmental and Community Services, and countywide agencies, makes it central to how WTD delivers reliable and sustainable infrastructure for the region.

As a member of the Division Leadership Team, the PPD Section Manager ensures that WTD’s capital delivery system operates with disciplined and risk-informed execution. The role guides how capital governance functions, how risks and system needs are surfaced, and how decision-ready information supports regulatory and financial commitments. This leadership ensures that long-range strategy is translated into clear and predictable delivery practices across the division.

The Section Manager leads more than 400 professional staff across eight specialized units that collectively deliver WTD’s multi-billion-dollar capital portfolio. The role provides direction, coordination, and integration across these units, ensuring consistent practices, strong technical foundations, and reliable project outcomes. Close partnership with Operations and Maintenance, Finance, Environmental and Community Services, and countywide agencies ensures that capital delivery aligns with system performance, community expectations, and long-term stewardship.

The PPD Section Manager also strengthens WTD’s capital delivery system by advancing quality, governance, workforce readiness, and continuous improvement. The role supports supervisors, develops people and teams, and reinforces a culture where safety, equity, collaboration, and accountability are core to how work gets done. This stewardship ensures that WTD’s capital delivery capabilities evolve with the complexity of the system and the needs of the region.

Equally important, the Section Manager must be able to lead within the ambiguity of a changing environment. This requires visioning for the future, integrating evolving regulatory requirements into a working utility, championing diverse strategies for capital delivery - including collaborative delivery methodologies - and implementing programmatic efficiencies across a complex portfolio of utility needs. This is a transformational time for WTD.

As WTD launches our Vision for Clean Water, shaped by staff and community input, to guide the Regional Wastewater Services Plan update. We are advancing projects to serve the next generation, meeting the moment with cost-optimization workshops and expanded engagement to develop a two-year sewer rate that offers greater predictability for ratepayers. The decisions and work of staff today are setting the course for our region for years to come.

At the same time, we continue the essential day-to-day work of operating 24/7, maintaining an aging system, and navigating complex regulatory processes. None of this is easy or straightforward. Yet time and again, WTD turns challenges into opportunities — bringing creativity to our work, sparking new possibilities, and reinforcing the resilience of our capital delivery system.

The duties and responsibilities described above are intended to provide a general framework for this position and may be modified, expanded or reassigned as organizational priorities, programs or operational needs evolve.

This position follows a hybrid work model, blending remote and in-person work.

Our Project Planning & Delivery team brings together a diverse group of specialized units that work collaboratively to plan, design, manage, and deliver critical infrastructure for our region. Together, we ensure that capital investments are strategic, technically sound,…