Black & Veatch: Our Commitment to a Sustainable Future

The beginning of a new year is always a great time for reflection, even more so when it’s the beginning of a new decade. At Black & Veatch, we design and build projects to operate for decades, so the long view comes naturally. It was with this spirit that in 2019 we undertook a series of initiatives to embrace the world we see today and prepare for the world we want in the years ahead.

Over the past year, Black & Veatch celebrated several important milestones in our company’s history. We celebrated 20 years of employee-ownership. We were recognized with major global project awards and marked the completion of transformational infrastructure projects across each of our businesses, all while driving home our culture of safety. We welcomed new leaders to our Board of Directors and Executive Committee. We added hundreds of new professionals with an expanding range of skills to our global locations. And we evaluated the markets we participate in while dramatically increasing the number and type of clients we engage with.

We also renewed our Mission, Vision and Values. Black & Veatch has always been a mission-driven company and, with our evolving workforce, 2019 was the right time to renew these core elements of our culture. The critical human infrastructure we design, build, optimize and enable improves the quality of life around the world, spurring economic growth and driving towards a more sustainable future. This last point is key and why sustainability – in what we do as a company and how we enable our clients to achieve their goals – is a critical component of our strategy.

Global trends are demanding more from infrastructure projects and the companies that sponsor and deliver them. But in this case, “global trends” are really our clients, our friends, our neighbors and the communities where we live and work. To help deliver on this mission, infrastructure must increasingly be connected, clean, distributed, resilient, adaptive and future-proofed. This reality is reflected in Black & Veatch’s new Mission: Building a world of difference through innovation in sustainable infrastructure. 

The accelerating pace of change in technology, business disruption and global challenges like climate change make me confident this new decade will be pivotal. In response, we will innovate in sustainable infrastructure with our clients. We will accelerate partnerships with clean technology startups, enabling them to scale-up faster. We will expand our mitigation and adaptation services, enabling clients to manage risk and make the transitions they are committing to. We will expand our services across a greater range of technologies and infrastructure types.

Every successful company continually evolves, reinventing itself as markets shift. Our success depends on our employee-owners finding new ways to create value for our clients, our partners and each other while holding fast to our values.

I’m proud to say that a deep spirit of service and integrity underpins our work because it impacts quality of life in fundamental ways. As we enter this new decade, we’ll continue to build the #WorldWeWant because we take accountability and #WeOwnIt. I look forward to being part of this journey with you.

Steve Edwards
Chief Executive Officer