We are navigating one of engineering’s most exciting and transformative eras. Rapidly advancing technology is building upon generations of experience to create opportunities for innovation that were previously unthinkable, and clients and owners’ expectations also are quickly evolving alongside this technology.
I recognize that the strength of our workforce now and into the future lies not just with individual expertise, but in how we collaborate across generations.
WSP has nearly 20,000 professionals across its U.S. locations, each bringing unique strengths and skills to their roles. They also represent a range of generations, each one complementing the others.
Our junior professionals have less than two years of experience, but their talent and fresh ideas are critical to the organization’s growth, provided they receive the proper support, training and guidance to become tomorrow’s leaders.
WSP’s mid-career professionals bring knowledge to guide and manage their developing colleagues. With five-to-10 years of experience, they bridge the gap between their junior counterparts and our senior professionals, who have decades of indispensable experience.
These generations of professionals bring differing perspectives united by one common objective: deliver the most technically excellent, well-conceived solutions for our clients. They are also committed to developing each other. They are progressing in their skill sets within an environment that fosters respect and cooperation among peers and colleagues.
Foster Meaningful Collaboration
We empower our people in ways that align with each generation’s special professional attributes and strengths. For example, early-career and junior team members bring a high level of digital fluency and media savvy, naturally navigating advanced communications tools for both internal and external engagement. Having grown up in a digital world, these skills come second nature to them.
Mid-career professionals are valuable assets to our organization, especially considering the industry's two-decade challenge in cultivating and retaining engineers to satisfy increasing demand. This shortage persists as senior experts retire, resulting in the loss of significant institutional knowledge and experience.
That’s why we’re determined to bridge generations and foster meaningful collaboration among all professionals of varying levels—this knowledge transfer is essential to our success.
Our senior professionals have seen incredible advancements in our industry over the past several decades, from technology to software evolution. They bring a wealth of experience to our workforce, offering invaluable insights into public involvement, quality control, client engagement, project fundamentals, delivery, controls and management.
Senior leaders serve as standard bearers for quality assurance and review, a role that’s essential to our work. While there’s always a push to do things better, faster and more cost-effectively, it’s often a sense of confidence, coupled with attention to detail, lessons learned and depth of experience, earned over years of practice and challenges, that make the greatest impact.
Rethinking Conventional Wisdom
To maximize the potential of our diverse talent, we encourage bi-directional knowledge sharing through regular workshops, technical forums and collaborative problem-solving sessions. By bringing together junior, mid-career and senior professionals in dynamic settings, we cultivate a culture where curiosity and expertise blend. This deliberate fostering of collective intelligence not only accelerates learning but also sparks creativity and innovative ideas that address the complex challenges our clients face.
We celebrate the achievements of teams that leverage multi-generational insights, recognizing that the intersection of seasoned understanding with new approaches often leads to breakthroughs. Within WSP, mentorship is a cornerstone, with experienced professionals guiding emerging talent, while also remaining open to fresh perspectives that prompt even veterans to rethink conventional wisdom.
Our commitment to cross-generational collaboration is reshaping how we approach projects, ensuring that every voice is valued and every contribution amplifies our capacity to deliver excellence.
The goal for leaders, in my view, is to create an environment where each generation's strengths complement each other, fostering continuous learning and professional development across the workforce.
We ask our people to focus on clients and execute projects at the highest technical and creative levels. As leaders, we must empower them to embrace and help shape the culture that we seek to foster for our business, and those communities we serve.
Sczurko discusses this topic and more as the featured guest on the Engineering News-Record "Critical Path" podcast.
