Nolan has witnessed significant industry transformation throughout his two decades at WSP. With a background in mechanical and integrated design engineering, he is most proud of his work within the healthcare and academic market helping clients integrate best practices to become operationally excellent. As the leader of market innovation and advisory solutions within the Property and Buildings practice, he sees his role as being a true partner to clients. Nolan shares how his role is all about being a listener, staying solutions focused and digging deep into operational challenges to reach desired business outcomes, especially around decarbonization and resilience.
Discover more about how he uses a Future Ready® mindset to begin solving tomorrow's problems today.
What does “digital innovation” mean to you?
Not all innovation is digital. However, in my practice as an engineer, digital innovation means being able to measure change. Using tech advances and data, we can study projects of every kind at a deeper level – new, existing, enterprise or portfolio – to understand how they’re operating today and determine how to create measurable changes to drive outcomes.
At the end of the day, we're all investing something: capital, processes, time, energy or people. Sophisticated clients and companies invest in disruptions that facilitate positive change. It’s the areas of positive disruption where clients and owners have connected most with digital innovation; where, together, we explore change scenarios, measurement options and the definition of successful outcomes.
What are your favorite types of problems to solve for clients?
Through most of my career, I have worked to solve existing building issues, whether that was energy, performance problems, expansions where we needed to increase the size of the building or determining if we need to create an entirely new program. Lately, I’ve been collaborating to increase resiliency, whether it's against climate change, economic uncertainty or even on-site generation and storage for owners. Though I have a true mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) building services background, being part of WSP allows me to color with a bigger box of crayons. In addition to my MEP knowledge, I can include problem-solvers in environmental impacts, compliance or transportation and circulation to maximize staff and user satisfaction and investment. Now, I’m solving problems around operational excellence on a scale that includes five-, ten- and 50-year solutions.
Which impactful projects are you working on now?
Two projects come to mind, and both for their community impact. First is a new hospital tower in Charlotte, North Carolina for Atrium Health. We're delivering an 800,000-square-foot surgery and emergency department patient tower that will better reflect the organization’s model of care and high level of excellence in a building that’s healthier for staff. Further, we worked with the architect and contractor on modular, repeatable solutions to save costs. Not value engineering, but adding value, which allowed the client to do more with medical equipment, autonomous-guided vehicles and so on.
For Northern Arizona Health, WSP served as their trusted partner for greenhouse gas inventory, risk assessments for climate, patients and caregivers and studying how climate is affecting their ability to provide high quality health care to those in the region. The Market Innovation and Advisory partnership resulted in a plan for the improved health of their business, which in turn will create a more healthful community.
