Beverley Stinson on Collaborative Delivery and the Future of Water Infrastructure

Most Exec Exchange conversations happen on the utility side of the table. In episode 105, Piers Clark crosses to the supply side to speak with Beverley Stinson, Chief Executive of AECOM’s global water business. AECOM has around 52,000 employees and works across water, transportation, buildings, program management and advisory, which gives it a vantage point few organizations can match. Stinson uses that view to make a clear case. The challenges facing infrastructure owners have outgrown transactional delivery. The sector now needs partnership models built on shared risk, shared reward and better tools.

From process engineer to global chief executive

Stinson completed her university education in the UK before moving to the US. After a period of adjunct teaching, she joined Metcalf & Eddy in Boston, a firm known to generations of engineers for its wastewater textbooks. Metcalf & Eddy later became part of AECOM, and Stinson has now spent more than 28 years with the company and its legacy businesses. She started as a wastewater process engineer running R&D on nutrient removal. She then led AECOM’s North America water business line for about five years and has led the global water business since 2019. Her path shows how deep technical expertise can underpin senior leadership, and her role now involves daily conversations with clients and colleagues across the world.

A convergence of pressures

Stinson describes the current moment as pivotal. Urbanization and population growth are placing heavy demands on water and every other form of infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure is aging and has gone without the investment and attention it needed. On top of this comes a shifting climate: sustained droughts, extended rainfall, storms and coastal surges. These require infrastructure to be hardened in ways the sector has not experienced before.

At the same time, investment remains constrained across much of the world, and fewer young professionals are entering engineering and infrastructure careers. As Piers observes, the workforce gap is itself pushing the sector toward AI and digital tools. Those tools are becoming essential to maintaining the services communities depend on.

Moving beyond transactional delivery

Historically, the client specified what it needed and the supply chain delivered it. That arrangement was clear and predictable. It struggles, however, when conditions change quickly and tight budgets leave little room for flexibility.

Stinson argues that the response lies in how work gets done. Owners, designers, contractors, program managers and advisers need to operate as one integrated team. They should optimize delivery together and use digital and AI tools along the way. In her words, what the industry delivers remains exceptional, while the way it delivers is evolving.

Lessons from Project 13 and Scottish Water

Stinson points to the UK as a leader in this shift. Project 13 was championed by water companies including Anglian Water and Thames Water. It moved the industry away from simply delivering a scope, taking the risk and moving on. In its place came alliance-style arrangements focused on outcomes, cost effectiveness, quality and certainty, with the customer at the center.

She credits Scottish Water with taking the approach further through its delivery enterprise model. Eight partners, including Scottish Water itself, sit as equals alongside designers and contractors. Together they develop a program of work designed to stretch every dollar.

The structure changes behavior. It rewards the smartest and quickest route to quality work and gets teams on and off site faster. It also relies on close monitoring of metrics to drive continuous improvement.

Piers raises the real test of any collaborative model: what happens when something goes wrong? In the Scottish Water arrangement, Stinson explains, partners share the downside as fully as the upside. That includes the owner, which represents the customer.

What utilities can learn from private and government clients

AECOM’s private sector work offers another lens. Stinson describes a sharp rise in private investment in water, driven by two trends. The first is the onshoring of manufacturing such as pharmaceuticals in Australia, the UK and North America. The second is rapid growth in chip fabrication plants and data centers. She cites projections of more than $7 trillion in data and AI center investment over the next five years. Mining is also set to expand significantly over the coming decades, often in new geographies. Meanwhile, national governments are investing heavily in defense, ports and harbors.

For utilities, the lessons center on four areas:

• contract design
• risk sharing
• partnering
• upfront advisory work

Private and government clients are testing new financing models and bringing public-private partnerships in more progressively. Stinson notes that these approaches build partly on what the municipal sector pioneered. She suggests that greater private investment may ultimately be needed in the municipal world as well.

For Piers, this is where multidisciplinary, multi-sector firms add particular value: they can carry proven practice from other industries into water.

Advice to her younger self

Asked what she would tell her younger self, Stinson says to learn as much as possible and never be afraid to move into a new arena. Her own career has moved from fluid dynamics and nutrient removal to tunnels, dams and contract models. Because the same challenges are appearing across the globe, she sees breadth as an asset. Her advice is to stay informed, take on new challenges, move swiftly and bring greater value every day to the people you support.

Stinson’s message to water leaders is practical. Pressures on infrastructure are compounding, and no single party can absorb them alone. Models that align owners and supply chains around shared outcomes, shared risk and better data offer a credible path forward. Some of the most useful lessons may come from outside the water sector.