Eugene city engineer wins top public works leadership award

Jenifer Willer is the city engineer for Eugene, managing a team of more than 80 people. They complete public works projects like repaving city streets, building dedicated bike lanes and upgrading aging bridges to withstand earthquakes. On Monday, Willer will be in Charlotte, North Carolina to accept an award from the American Public Works Association recognizing her as a 2022 top ten leader in public works in North America. The Register-Guard first reported the news of Willer’s selection last month. She joins us to talk about receiving this honor and how the job of city engineer can make a difference in people’s daily lives and their use of the urban environment, in ways great and small.

Note: The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Jenifer Willer is the city engineer for Eugene. She manages a team of more than 80 people. They work on the kinds of things that are vital but that you might take for granted like repaving streets, seismically upgrading bridges and putting In water and sewer lines. This Monday Willer will accept an award from the American Public Works Association recognizing her as one of the top 10 leaders in public works in North America. The association singled out her work on sustainability and on bridges. Jenifer Willer joins us now to talk about her work and this award. Welcome to Think Out Loud and congratulations.

Jenifer Willer: Hi. Thank you, and thank you for having me, Dave.

Miller: Well let’s go way back. I’m curious what drew you to engineering in the first place.

Willer: Yeah, I’m a little bit unusual in that I actually come from a family of engineers and specifically civil engineers working for public agencies. My grandfather was a civil engineer, working for the Oregon Department of Transportation. And then my father was a civil engineer, eventually working for Lane County Public Works in the Eugene area.

Miller: It’s in your blood.

Willer: It’s in my blood. [laughs]

Miller: Were you a builder and a tinkerer growing up?

Willer: Absolutely. I remember being a small child, driving around dump trucks in the dirt and actually building roads and things for my little toys and things to travel around the yard in.

Miller: Can I ask you, we’ve talked a lot in recent years about the broad efforts to get more girls and young women interested in STEM – science, technology engineering and math. Did you get encouragement from your grandfather and your father to follow their footsteps?

Willer: Absolutely. Growing up, I didn’t realize how unusual it was for girls and women to choose this career, as a choice. It wasn’t until I actually got into school and into the profession that I realized how pretty unusual, and it still is today.

Miller: Still. That was my next question. How much has it changed since you have been doing this work, given that there has been so much more of an emphasis on diversifying engineering and these other related fields?

Willer: Yeah. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s changed a lot. I think I’m really fortunate here on the West Coast and in the Northwest. I think that you can look around and see a lot of women in leadership positions, in engineering and public works. But, I believe that recent studies have come out to show that women still only make up around a quarter of engineering graduates and are probably still only in the teens in the profession.

Miller: Your first engineering job was in the private sector, in Idaho if I’m not mistaken…

Willer: That is correct.

Miller: Why did you switch to the public sector?

Willer: Well, like I said, it really was kind of in my blood. It’s what I was really familiar with was working for public agencies. But I also really wanted to get that well-rounded experience. Honestly, growing up here in Oregon, I’ve never actually been to Idaho before I went out for my job interview. So I also just wanted to kind of experience something different than what I’d been growing up with. It was a great experience. We were a consulting firm, but we also worked for a lot of really small, rural cities and counties all over in Idaho and eastern Oregon.

Miller: But now it seems like one of the hallmarks of the work you do is how geographically constrained it is. I mean, you work in the city. Does that mean that all the time when you’re walking around or biking around or driving around, you see stuff that you’ve either managed directly or had a hand in?

Willer: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve been at this city since 2005, so that’s a lot of projects that I’ve been involved in. Not only do I see the things that I’ve had a hand in but I also now drive around or walk around and think about the things that need to be done. My eye is always kind of going, ‘Oh, that needs to be taken care of.’ or ‘That needs to be done.’

Miller: What kinds of things catch your attention along those lines. I mean, if you walk around what can you not help but notice?

Willer: I’ve managed and designed a lot of paving projects, so I would say that that’s the first thing that– [laughs] I’m sure that most people take that completely for granted, but I see paving everywhere, and I’m constantly thinking about, ‘Oh, this is what needs to be done to that street.’ or ‘Ooh, we better catch that before it gets much worse because it’s going to be a lot more expensive if we let that one go.’

Miller: Well, I think we – I mean those of us who aren’t engineers –  we take it for granted until something doesn’t work, until there’s a pothole that hits the undercarriage or that gives us a flat tire. It’s only when things go wrong that many of us, I think, pay attention to the work that you do day in, day out.

Willer: Absolutely. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people where I talk about treating wastewater or treating drinking water, and people kind of scratching their heads and saying,  ‘What do you need to do with the water?’

Miller: Really, that people aren’t aware that we need water treatment and that poop has to go somewhere, for example?

Willer: [laughing] Well, I think they just take it so for granted that somehow it gets cleaned up and becomes safe for people to do. I don’t know that some people really understand the processes and how technical it really is to make all that happen. Also, just to get the water from a treatment plant or a well all the way to your home so that, when you flush the toilet or turn on a faucet, it comes out clean and safe for you to drink.

Miller: How much do folks around town want to talk to you about the work that is being done in the city?

Willer: A lot. I say that people take it for granted, but everybody… I meet with people all the time that are interested specifically [in] what’s going on, on their street or in front of their house. I think that’s where you can get people the best information about your projects, too, because those are the people that are experiencing it every day and see what happens every day in front of their house.

Miller: One of the projects that you worked on was a protected bike lane along a corridor that connected downtown Eugene to the [University of Oregon] campus. What kind of impact did that project have?

Willer: Yeah, that was a great project that we actually received federal funding to pay for a majority of that project. At the time, that was a one-way, busy, car street. There were no bike lanes on it. But it is a major route between downtown and the University of Oregon campus. There’s apartments in downtown and stores. People were riding their bikes, sometimes the wrong way on the street, sometimes on the sidewalks, and it was really busy. So to get that federal grant, and then be able to deliver that project, was I think a real game-changer for that corridor because now there is a space that is just for bicycles that is separated from the lanes by a low median. They can ride both ways on it. There’s signals that are special just for the bicycles. I think it really made a significant difference in the safety of that corridor.

Miller: What went through your mind when you heard you were going to get this [APWA] award?

Willer: I was pretty shocked because I still feel like I learn something every day. So I still thought that I was kind of young in my career and that people more experienced than I get that kind of recognition. But I was also just really touched because this is something that my peers here in Oregon… My name was put forward by the Oregon Chapter for this recognition. So I was just really touched that there were my peers, my professional peers, that felt that I was deserving of this.

Miller: That’s often the kind of praise that means the most because it comes from people who you actually know what you do.

Willer: Absolutely. And then it’s been really great because, since the award was announced, I’ve received so many positive and supportive messages from other professionals as well as community members.

Miller: How much has climate change changed the way you think about your job?

Willer: It is now really integral to the work that we do. Every project that we do, we think about, what are steps that we can take on the project to make it better for the long-term future? Are there things that we can do to reduce the waste that comes from the project? Are there materials that we can use on the project that have less greenhouse gasses embodied into the manufacture of them or the placement of them? Are there ways that we can fit more trees onto the project where we can grow our urban canopy and make it a more livable and also greener place for people to live, as well as are there ways that we can treat the runoff from the streets so that it’s cleaner when it gets to our streams or other water bodies?

Miller: I know you just said that you were partly surprised to get the award because you still think of yourself as an engineer at the beginning of your career. But you’ve been doing this for close to 20 years now, which I imagine means that you could be a mentor at times to truly beginning-of-their-career engineers. What do you find that you tell them over and over again? What advice do you give them?

Willer: Well, I will have to say that I really do love the part of my job where I am able to train and guide young engineers or young public works professionals into the career. I do think that this is a great career for anybody to consider. My biggest advice for people is just to go out and experience things and learn. This is a pretty broad profession in that you can work on all sorts of different things. It’s really easy to just kind of learn about it all and then really figure out what you’re passionate about and become knowledgeable and an expert in that thing.

Miller: We just have about a minute left. You’re gonna be going to Charlotte, North Carolina to accept this award. When you go to a new place, a new city, do you check out the bridges and the sewers and the guts of a city?

Willer: You know, I can’t help it. And it’s really funny; if you were to even take a road trip with my dad and I, we are always pointing out public works things as we drive along or going through construction zones. So, same thing when I visit a new city. It’s now just kind of baked into me that I look at, what is the traffic control on that construction project, or, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting technique that they used for that signal there.’ and oftentimes come back to Eugene and share those ideas of, ‘Hey, we should check into that thing that I saw.’

Miller: Jenifer Willer, congratulations and thanks for giving us some of your afternoon. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Willer: Alright. It was nice talking to you. Thank you.

Miller: That’s Jenifer Willer, city engineer in the Department of Public Works for the city of Eugene who is about to go to North Carolina to get a national award as one of the top 10 leaders in public works in North America.

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