CDM Smith Presents 2021 Awards in Technical Excellence, Innovation and Mentorship

BOSTON—An important element of CDM Smith’s culture is celebrating our successes and acknowl­edg­ing remarkable contri­bu­tions. Our annual Enterprise Awards spotlight extra­or­di­nary technical excellence, career development and client service. Being exceptional in these areas is central to who we are and our position as a choice firm in the industry.

The winners of the Technical Paper, Thomas Camp and President's Awards were announced at CDM Smith’s annual meeting, broadcast live to all direct share­hold­ers of our privately held firm from our Boston head­quar­ters on April 12, 2022. Congrat­u­la­tions to the winners!

The Best Technical Paper Awards program recognizes individuals for delivering technical excellence, advancing the firm as an industry leader and showcasing our expertise. CDM Smith awards $10,000 to the primary author of the best paper in a peer reviewed journal and $10,000 to the primary author of the best paper in a non-peer reviewed publication.  

Melissa A. Harclerode, Ph.D., BCES won Best Peer-Reviewed Paper for her paper: “Preparing for effective, adaptive risk commu­ni­ca­tion about PFAS in drinking water” published in AWWA’s Water Science journal. The use of a community-specific adaptive risk commu­ni­ca­tion strategy can allow munic­i­pal­i­ties to assess and mitigate PFAS while addressing community concerns. Check out our innovative PFAS treatments and meet our industry experts to help solve your PFAS challenges.

Scott Craig, PE, BCEE won Best Non-Peer-Reviewed Paper for his paper: “A Digital Twin is More Than Hype; How Hartford MDC is Putting It to Use for Resilient Capital Improve­ments Planning” presented at WEFTEC. In the digital era, utilities are bombarded with new technology solutions that promise to solve their challenges. Learn more about Trinnex and how we can be your trusted digital solutions partner.

The President’s Award program recognizes outstanding individuals in the areas of Innovation and Mentorship for the prior year. Recipients are nominated by their colleagues across the firm and winners are selected by President and Chief Operating Officer Tony Bouchard from a very competitive field in both areas of distinction. Each recipient of the President’s Awards receives a career development package of up to $5,000.

Innovation
The 2021 President’s Award for Innovation has been awarded to two incredible recipients:

Jayson Brennen, GISP is widely recognized by his peers for his natural ability to be visionary and lead innovation. Most recently, Jason developed a “data unity” strategy for the U.S. Navy. This strategy helps the Navy unleash the power of data to support global infra­struc­ture management. With the data unity strategy, key Navy technology envi­ron­ments are being unified — creating tools that help decision-makers visualize existing conditions and analyze data to support critical utility operations and capital planning in a way this client has never been able to do before.  For CDM Smith, this is just the start of a service offering that will extend far beyond the Navy.

Brendan Brown, PWS has led the development of CDM Smith’s envi­ron­men­tal remote sensing and machine learning program using state-of-the-art, 10-band drone-based multi­spec­tral sensors. This is a new service line for CDM Smith and is a capability that most of our competitors do not have. The ability to collect large, high-resolution drone-based data sets and apply machine learning to interpret and leverage this data is differ­en­ti­at­ing CDM Smith from competitors.

Mentorship
The 2021 President’s Award for Mentorship has been awarded to Sarah Stewart, PE. Her infectious attitude and work ethic inspires those around her by creating an environment that fosters career growth, technical excellence and exceptional client service. She empowers staff to take on increasing levels of respon­si­bil­ity to stretch and grow their own career development. Sarah sets clear expec­ta­tions for those working under her and provides guidance to teach and develop new skills. This kind of intentional mentoring is more important than ever as we embrace and excel in a hybrid work model.

Finally, the Thomas Camp Award − named for one of our founders − represents the essential integration of client service, technical excellence and exemplary business results. We focus intensely on our client rela­tion­ships so that we can build an unmatched level of trust and confidence providing an in-depth under­stand­ing of our clients’ needs and expec­ta­tions. As a result, we can assemble the right team of talented staff to produce the best solutions and ultimately achieve the strong business performance necessary for continued growth and development. The Thomas Camp Award recognizes the project—and especially the project team—that best achieves all three facets of excellence.

The 2021 Thomas Camp Award winner is the PFAS Remedial Inves­ti­ga­tion, Interim Remedial Measure, and Mobile PFAS Treatment System Design-Build project for one of our confi­den­tial defense and aerospace clients. This project brought a remarkable new PFAS treatment technology to North America for the first time: a portable, container­ized, water treatment system that uses natural processes to separate PFAS from water. 

Partnering with EPOC Enviro, CDM Smith conducted bench-scale testing of the mobile PFAS treatment system in our R&D lab, and following promising results put the system to work at the site. During the 3-month pilot, the system separated and concen­trated PFAS, achieving 97% PFAS removal, and met state discharge standards.

This successful pilot is an important development in PFAS treatment for its versatility, but also for its ability to concentrate PFAS. Congrat­u­la­tions to the winning team and project for delivering legendary service to this long-standing client and advancing our PFAS transforma­tional growth area! 

Your incredible contri­bu­tions make CDM Smith the best, brightest and boldest in the industry!

CDM Smith is a privately owned engineering and construc­tion firm providing legendary client service and smart solutions in water, environment, trans­porta­tion, energy and facilities. Passionate about our work and invested in each other, we are inspired to think and driven to solve the world's envi­ron­men­tal and infra­struc­ture challenges.