Dana Al-Qadi, D.Eng, PE is a vice president at ArchTam and a director of our Energy practice in the U.S. Her technical experience includes decarbonization, electrification, resilience and program management. She is a licensed civil engineer and graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil and environmental engineering and received her doctoral degree from the George Washington University where her dissertation focused on urban water system resilience.

1. Tell us a little bit about your career journey and your role at ArchTam?

When I first joined ArchTam, I worked as an engineer in the Water team. It was my first job in the industry after graduate school and I worked on water treatment plants, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) compliance, and vulnerability assessments. Soon after, I started to expand my work to sustainability and resilience projects and transportation decarbonization projects across the United States.  

Today, I lead ArchTam’s Energy practice across the western United States and am active in our strategy and growth around transportation decarbonization.  This role is exciting for me because many states in the western US, particularly states like California, are on the cutting edge of key energy initiatives, such as grid modernization, renewables, and decarbonization.

I have enjoyed the diversity of my career journey thus far and am especially grateful to the wonderful mentorship I have received along the way.  It has made such opportunities possible and allowed me to shape my career in a way that is very meaningful for me on both a personal and professional level.

2. Talk to us about a project that has impacted or been a major highlight of your career. How is it solving the challenges and issues our clients and communities are facing today? 

ArchTam has a long history of supporting the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which includes London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and now Los Angeles 2028 (LA28).

I’m proud to be currently working on the energy advisory and planning strategy for LA28, to ensure that the City of Los Angeles can deliver the Games more sustainably with decarbonization and resilience goals at the forefront.

LA28 represents a particularly poignant moment in the history of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Memorial Coliseum will be the first venue in the history of the Games to have been used in three Olympic Games (1932, 1984 and 2028). LA is also relying on existing infrastructure, providing an opportunity to evaluate opportunities for meaningful and long-term sustainability initiatives. In doing so, it also represents a microcosm of similar journeys other cities all over the world will find themselves on as they work to achieve decarbonization goals by leveraging their existing infrastructure.

The Games is also driven by clear goals to positively impact the broader Los Angeles community, with a particular emphasis on supporting disadvantaged communities, the need for inclusive access and meaningful legacy. The work with LA28 has been especially meaningful to me as it represents the ways in which energy advisory and planning are vital components of addressing real challenges faced by communities. I take pride in our team and the role that ArchTam has in working with partners all over the city to ensure that the Games is something our Los Angeles community will be proud of.

3. How is LA100 driving Los Angeles to transition to cleaner, greener, more sustainable energy sources?

The LA100 initiative is propelling Los Angeles towards cleaner, greener, and more sustainable energy sources by reflecting the city’s deep commitment to investing in renewable energy. By setting ambitious targets and milestones, LA100 is providing a measurable way to achieve goals related to decarbonization and grid modernization. As one of the first plans of its kind in the U.S, it stands out as a groundbreaking study that provides a blueprint for how to assess the impact such transitions can have on local jobs, the economy and equity.

As we consider the transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy, one of the important focus areas is to ensure that the benefits are widespread and inclusive.  As a study, LA100 is intentional about strategies to improve action and promote participation in programs aimed at advancing the clean energy transition. The commitment to meaningful actions and partnerships is a significant aspect of the LA100 initiative and it’s enabling ArchTam to support our LA community, which resonates strongly with our own ESG strategy Sustainable Legacies and improving social outcomes in the communities in which we work.

4. What are some of the innovations you’re seeing in the energy industry that are helping organizations to achieve their net zero carbon goals? 

The energy industry is full of innovation. Gone are the days when infrastructure projects were solely defined by a single discipline. Today, many infrastructure projects recognize the need to be multidisciplinary, with energy often serving as the foundational cornerstone for the success of the entire project. The big driver behind this transition is the need to address decarbonization, requiring fundamental shifts in how we address core infrastructure components such as buildings, mobility, and our grid system. It allows us to reimagine how infrastructure systems interact with one another – for example, commercial equipment that can combine both bidirectional EV charging and solar energy conversion and then be fully integrated into home battery storage to be used as a distributed energy resource (DER) represents how creative the energy sector can be and how technology is evolving to meet the interdisciplinary and holistic needs of the moment regarding infrastructure. At the core of this is a commitment to innovations within our grid system to ensure that as electrification continues to increase, we ensure that our system can meet demand.

We are seeing the energy industry increasingly embracing digital advancements to expedite the energy transition and enhance sustainable solutions. This includes the integration of tools like digital twins, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) networks, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles. All of these digital innovations contribute to a faster and more effective realization of net zero goals and are largely driven by the energy industry.

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Dana AlQadi, an associate vice president in our Energy business, shares examples of how she is prioritizing safety in her work and for her team.

Tell us a little bit about your career journey and your role at ArchTam?

I just celebrated my 10-year anniversary at ArchTam and have had an incredible career journey. I have an academic background in civil and environmental engineering, with a focus on drinking water quality and treatment and am a licensed civil engineer. My doctorate degree was in engineering management and my dissertation focused on quantifying the impacts of stakeholder engagement, particularly early engagement, on urban water system resilience. When I first joined ArchTam, I worked as an engineer in our water group.

After a few years, my work began to expand into emerging topics, like sustainability and resilience. Today, I lead operations for Energy’s west region and lead our strategy and growth around transportation decarbonization, an exciting and important technical area.

My career at ArchTam has been filled with lots of wonderful mentorship, especially from other women colleagues, and incredible project opportunities that have shaped my career in a way that feels very meaningful to me.

How do you prioritize safety in how you approach work for our clients?

Currently, one of the largest programs in my region is our Strategic Undergrounding Program (SUG) for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). We are working with SDG&E by providing program management services and supporting their wildfire mitigation efforts to reduce the risk of public safety power shutoffs and improve community safety and reliability. Managing this program is a significant undertaking and is a great example of how our teams prioritize safety both in our program level execution but also in terms of the type of work we do.

Our work with SDG&E represents a core principle of how we approach our work in Energy, where we often address safety by protecting our communities from the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events. By delivering innovative solutions to reduce the risk of wildfires, this work will have a long-lasting impact on communities in San Diego and a legacy of community safety that we are very proud to be associated with.

In addition to our work with SDG&E, we promote healthy and safe communities by supporting our clients on important work, such as fleet electrification, grid modernization, renewable energy, decarbonization, and measuring equity impacts of infrastructure investments on disadvantaged communities. Our collective focus on sustainability and resilience through our delivery helps our communities navigate through the world safely.

What are some examples that demonstrate your approach to strong safety principles?

Demonstrating strong safety principles is often about creating a sense of safety among project team members. This includes ensuring a culture of trust, where everyone has confidence in the direction of the work and feel empowered in knowing where to seek support and raise concerns. We want our teams to feel like if they see something, they can say something. When that culture is present in a team, we are all are more likely to collectively embody strong safety principles and support one another in doing so.

Our larger projects can involve a range of subconsultants and contractors and it is important that they all adhere to our high standards of safety. We implement a ‘one-team’ approach where we emphasize consistent communication, prioritize safety moments at the start of our meetings, and appoint designated safety individuals to support our work.

We also make sure to focus on upfront planning — really assessing the potential risks of a project and developing site safety plans for our work that have an on-site component. We make sure that all our team members are trained on our safety protocols and understand how to report incidents.

We also address safety from a digital perspective. Our teams regularly interact with sensitive information and we make sure that all of our team members know how to properly share, save and protect information related to our projects and our clients. In doing so, we can help maintain safe data quality practices.

ArchTam has so many wonderful safety professionals and I am grateful that I have the opportunity to work with them and learn from them on our projects.

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