In game theory, there are finite games of which there are winners and losers—competitive, cooperative, positive sum and negative sum. And then there is what is called an infinite game, where the only objective is to keep playing. And that’s what cities are. When does a city win? When do you declare victory? Our cities never have a final victory—though we celebrate intermittent success—and they never end. Unless they do, in which case, we lose. As engineers, it is our personal job and responsibility to help keep the game going. To make sure what we build today is left to build upon tomorrow.
FROM RESILIENCE TO REAL-WORLD ENGINEERING
Beginning in R&D with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, studying resilience long before it became a buzzword, we were trying to operationalize resilience as an engineering concept. To not only design systems that work but that recover when they don’t and adapt to changes yet to come.
Flood control was a great teacher. We build levees and detention basins and call areas safe, and then we build more. More homes, businesses, parking lots all generating more runoff the original system wasn’t designed to handle. When that bigger and “better” system fails, it fails bigger. Bigger flood volumes cascading over bigger levees into bigger developments. It was then that I realized, by designing how a system works, we also design how it fails.
Think of a car’s crumple zone. It’s intentionally designed to fail in a specific way—to save your life. Shouldn’t our infrastructure do the same? That’s resilience. And that’s the infinite game—to design places of intermittent failure so we can keep playing toward the next success.
After my time with the Corps, I moved into the private sector, redesigning drainage and infrastructure for Texas cities, later joining the Texas Water Development Board, managing grant funds and as a team, drafting the state’s first engineering guidance on resilience and green infrastructure. It might sound like paperwork, but for me it was purpose. I enjoyed what I was doing. I was protecting the public’s funds. Because public funds are tax dollars—yours, mine, ours. And I think someone should…care (to say professionally), so I became that person.
My wife’s job took us to Houston where I later became City Engineer for Missouri City. My background at the time I started out was resilience and flood and drainage infrastructure, but Missouri City had traffic problems. So, I bought books on city planning, city management, traffic management, and I gave myself a six-month crash course. For three years as the City Engineer, my planning horizon focused on keeping the city in the game. Redeveloping and reimagining forever, and that is the same time scale I consider districts on. When does it fail? And how do we avoid that?
Although I loved my job, in starting a new family, I looked for a new balance. Somewhere that valued people as much as projects. That’s when I found EHRA Engineering. What drew me here was simple: genuine care. The same care I bring to my work. Now, as a Senior Project Manager in District Services, I get to apply all those lessons to something I love. We manage districts as living systems, always evolving, always building on what came before.
Land Services creates new districts with the support of our other services, and when they hand them to us, our team’s job is to nurture them, to keep them strong, functional and ready for the future. My role is to mentor the next generation of engineers and interns who will one day take our place. We’re not just managing projects; we’re building the people who will manage the next ones. That’s how our game continues.
THE INFINITE MINDSET
Like cities, districts never reach a finish line. Unable to “win,” they can only persist, and that’s the mindset that drives every design decision we make. When we think long-term, we think about how water will flow, how infrastructure will age, how communities will grow. We’re building not just for today’s residents, but for generations we’ll never meet.
And that, to me, is what makes engineering meaningful. Civilization literally depends on the systems we build. If the internet goes down, we can cope. If the electric grid fails, we cook on grills and warm ourselves by gas fireplaces. But if water systems collapse? How long can we last? Water is the foundation of every community. And so, it matters. The funding around it matters, the infrastructure around it matters. Everything else is just luxury stacked on top.
Leaving one piece of advice for other engineers or future leaders, it would be this: fail boldly. My biggest strides have always come from failures. From trying something ambitious, getting it wrong and learning. Because the success that got us here is not necessarily the success that will conquer our next challenge. Engineering isn’t just about precision; it’s about courage—the courage to innovate, to risk being wrong and to get back up again.
In turn, live boldly too. Read. Travel. Be curious. Take on things that scare you. Because if other people aren't setting limits on your ability, why should you?
