Water Asset Management & Advisory Practice Leader

Michael Baker International•Lakewood, CO

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Michael Baker International is seeking a Water Asset Management & Advisory Practice Leader in Denver, CO. This senior seller-doer and practice leadership role is responsible for building, leading, and growing the organization’s water asset management and advisory capabilities across drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, and related utility infrastructure. The role involves business development, client engagement, delivery oversight, practice development, and team leadership. The Practice Leader will act as a trusted advisor to water utilities, municipalities, public works organizations, and local government clients, assisting them in improving asset performance, optimizing capital investment, managing infrastructure risk, strengthening organizational performance, and making informed long-term investment decisions. The ideal candidate will possess deep water-sector knowledge combined with strong consulting, commercial, and client leadership skills, aiming to build a distinct advisory practice that complements the organization’s existing engineering, planning, program management, technology, and infrastructure delivery services.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering, environmental science, business, public administration, finance, planning, or a related discipline; advanced degree preferred.
15+ years of progressive experience within the water and wastewater industry, consulting, asset management, infrastructure advisory, utility management, or related fields.
Demonstrated success leading and growing a consulting, asset management, or advisory business.
Strong understanding of water utility operations, infrastructure, asset lifecycle management, and capital planning.
Proven business development and client relationship management experience.
Experience originating opportunities and leading complex pursuits from initial client engagement through contract award.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple client engagements and multidisciplinary teams simultaneously.
Strong commercial judgment, including experience with pricing, scope development, contract considerations, and project financial performance.
Experience advising C-suite executives, utility leaders, public officials, and other senior stakeholders.
Strong analytical, strategic planning, and problem-solving capabilities.
Exceptional executive communication, facilitation, presentation, and relationship-management skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with large municipal, regional, or public water and wastewater utilities.
Experience building or scaling a water asset management or infrastructure advisory practice.
Familiarity with ISO 55000 asset management principles and related industry frameworks.
Experience with IBM Maximo, SAP, Infor, Cityworks, or comparable enterprise asset management platforms.
Experience with GIS, digital twins, predictive analytics, asset data platforms, or infrastructure analytics.
Experience with utility financial planning, affordability, capital funding, and long-term investment planning.
Knowledge of resilience, climate adaptation, regulatory compliance, and major capital program environments.
Professional Engineer (PE), Certified Asset Management Assessor (CAMA), IAM certification, or other relevant credentials preferred.

Responsibilities

Drive business development across the water, wastewater, stormwater, and local government sectors.
Engage industry leaders, clients, professional associations, and external networks to identify and originate new business opportunities.
Leverage water industry expertise, market knowledge, and commercial acumen to proactively identify client needs and shape business development campaigns.
Develop and execute targeted growth strategies for asset management, capital planning, utility advisory, resilience, performance improvement, and related consulting services.
Build trusted executive relationships with utility leaders, public works directors, municipal executives, and other senior client stakeholders.
Identify opportunities to expand advisory services within existing engineering, planning, and program management accounts.
Create cross-selling opportunities across water engineering, digital, planning, environmental, program management, and other service lines.
Oversee all aspects of business development for individual engagements and broader strategic campaigns.
Lead client outreach, opportunity qualification, capture planning, proposal development, and interview preparation.
Shape client solutions and develop differentiated approaches based on client objectives, market conditions, technical considerations, and commercial requirements.
Lead solutions architecture for complex advisory and asset management pursuits.
Develop commercial and pricing strategies that appropriately balance competitiveness, client value, risk, and profitability.
Coordinate internal technical, legal, financial, risk, and operational reviews associated with major pursuits.
Ensure compliance with organizational business development, contracting, and risk management procedures.
Serve as executive sponsor and senior client advisor across multiple asset management and advisory engagements.
Oversee multiple parallel delivery teams operating across different engagement scopes, delivery models, schedules, and client environments.
Provide leadership and direction for client interactions related to project progress, emerging findings, strategic choices, and validation of recommendations.
Maintain visibility with C-suite executives, utility leadership, boards, senior municipal stakeholders, and other decision-makers.
Anticipate client concerns and proactively address issues affecting delivery quality, scope, schedule, or client satisfaction.
Ensure advisory engagements consistently deliver measurable client value and reinforce long-term strategic relationships.
Lead and oversee water and wastewater asset management strategies, programs, and advisory engagements.
Advise clients on asset lifecycle planning, condition assessment, asset criticality, infrastructure risk, reliability, and renewal strategies.
Develop and guide risk-based asset management and capital investment frameworks.
Support development of asset inventories, condition assessment strategies, levels of service, performance measures, and lifecycle plans.
Help utilities prioritize maintenance, rehabilitation, renewal, and replacement investments.
Lead development of long-range capital improvement and infrastructure investment strategies.
Advise clients on enterprise asset management strategy, governance, organizational capabilities, and implementation roadmaps.
Architect analytical workstreams and define the approach for complex advisory engagements.
Strategically guide project teams in developing analyses, models, frameworks, and client recommendations.
Provide timely quality assurance over project scope, assumptions, methodologies, analyses, findings, and recommendations.
Challenge project teams to ensure conclusions are supported by appropriate technical and analytical evidence.
Identify and escalate key delivery decisions, technical considerations, commercial constraints, and client risks.
Integrate input from technical experts, project leaders, and functional specialists into cohesive client solutions.
Ensure that highly technical information is translated into actionable business, operational, and investment recommendations.
Lead development of risk-based capital improvement programs and long-range infrastructure investment strategies.
Help clients prioritize investment based on asset condition, criticality, service levels, regulatory requirements, resilience needs, affordability, and financial capacity.
Develop investment scenarios and business cases for major infrastructure programs.
Advise clients on balancing infrastructure renewal, system expansion, regulatory requirements, operational priorities, and long-term resilience.
Support capital portfolio optimization, program governance, prioritization frameworks, and investment decision-making.
Translate engineering and asset information into clear recommendations for executives, boards, councils, and other nontechnical stakeholders.
Advise water utility and local government executives on strategy, governance, organizational effectiveness, and performance improvement.
Lead strategic planning, operating models, transformation, and organizational assessment engagements.
Help clients improve decision-making, accountability, performance management, and cross-functional coordination.
Advise clients on workforce strategy, operating efficiency, service delivery, and organizational readiness.
Develop benchmarking frameworks, key performance indicators, and operational performance measures.
Facilitate executive workshops, board discussions, and senior leadership working sessions.
Oversee narrative development and production of highly polished client deliverables.
Ensure recommendations are clear, compelling, analytically supported, and appropriate for executive-level audiences.
Maintain quality control over presentations, reports, business cases, strategic plans, and implementation roadmaps.
Establish consistent standards for advisory work products across the practice.
Ensure engagement outputs meet client expectations and organizational quality standards.
Build and execute the strategy for the Water Asset Management & Advisory practice.
Define the practice’s priority markets, services, capabilities, growth targets, and investment needs.
Establish repeatable methodologies, analytical frameworks, tools, intellectual property, and delivery approaches.
Lead development of market-facing thought leadership, research, industry perspectives, and client-facing content.
Identify emerging trends and translate them into new advisory services and go-to-market strategies.
Monitor financial and operational performance of the practice, including pipeline, revenue, backlog, utilization, profitability, and delivery performance.
Partner with Finance and leadership on forecasting, planning, resource allocation, and performance improvement.
Continually improve practice operations, delivery models, quality standards, and commercial performance.
Build and lead a high-performing multidisciplinary team of asset management, strategy, analytics, digital, engineering, and utility advisory professionals.
Recruit and develop senior practitioners and emerging leaders.
Proactively coach, mentor, and develop staff across all levels of the practice.
Conduct and contribute to performance appraisals, talent reviews, career planning, and succession planning.
Provide teams with clear expectations, actionable feedback, and opportunities for professional development.
Foster a collaborative culture focused on client impact, innovation, accountability, commercial awareness, and technical excellence.
Coordinate contributions from peers and technical experts across the broader organization to deliver integrated client solutions.
Advance the application of GIS, enterprise asset management systems, analytics, artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, digital twins, and related technologies.
Help clients develop asset data strategies and improve data quality, governance, and accessibility.
Support implementation and optimization of asset management technology platforms.
Develop analytics that improve maintenance, inspection, renewal, and capital investment decision-making.
Identify opportunities to automate and improve asset management and capital planning processes.
Partner with digital and technology teams to develop scalable solutions that differentiate the practice in the market.