Senior Natural Resource Economist
Many of the world’s top engineers and scientists come together in our Water business because they view a community’s interaction with water a bit differently—as a single holistic system, rather than unconnected networks divided by jurisdictional boundaries. Working throughout the hydrologic cycle, we are delivering sustainable solutions to make sure water is where it should be and available when needed. Our experts guide our work with scientific rigor, an innovative spirit, and a vision for growth. Every day, we help communities improve, reuse, and protect this precious resource for future generations. By 2025 we’re hiring 2,000 people (like you) to join our team. Grow with us, H2O+U.
Your Opportunity
Stantec is actively growing our economics practice and we are looking to hire economists at a variety of different levels. Stantec’s economists work together with top engineers, scientists, and planners to conduct holistic evaluations of societies’ interactions with the natural and built environments. With Business Lines in the following industries: Energy; Water; Transportation; Mining, Minerals & Metals; Buildings; Community Development; Federal Government and Construction Management, our 28,000 employees work to understand natures’ cycles and systems, to help optimize resource allocation decisions for resiliency, efficiency, and sustainability. Stantec is a place to satisfy your passion for economics by collaborating with top technical talents on work that is critical to our clients and the communities they support. Come grow with us!
This position is a client facing and staff leadership position with our Management Consulting Team (MTC). As a consultant within the MTC, you will have the opportunity to create, design, and implement economic analyses that help our federal, state, and local government clients to make informed resource management decisions. Projects will include cost benefit analyses, national economic development analyses, ecosystem service valuation, and regional economic impact statements. This position is flexible as to location and can be remote.
Your Key Responsibilities
- Design and lead economic research to estimate the economic and financial feasibility of civil works projects utilizing federal guidance methods of assessment including but not limited to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance in circulars (A-11, A-94) and the Federal Principles, Requirements and Agency-specific guidelines for Federal Investments in Water Resources.
- Evaluate economic and financial feasibility of both traditional structural projects, as well as nature-based solutions where appropriate. An example structural project is development of models and facilities to protect built infrastructure from flooding; a non-structural solution might include restoration of a wetland designed to manage storm runoff and act as an ecological filter through physical and biological treatment.
- Support business development in Climate Solutions, Coastal Resilience, Ecosystem Restoration, Energy Transition, Smart Cities, Sustainability and International Development by telling the economic story of projects such as groundwater remediation, wetlands restoration, water quality regulations, carbon offsets, and air quality regulations.
- Provide advice on business development, employee development, training of junior staff, and workload management.
- Serve as an active member of multiple teams performing tasks such as evaluating client-specific situations and requirements and presenting to clients.
- Grow and maintain client relationships and lead business development efforts in responding to client requests, RFQs, and RFPs.
- Serve as an independent reviewer of analyses prepared by peers or junior staff to ensure technical accuracy and appropriateness of methods and tools being utilized as well as solutions being evaluated.
- Serve as the project manager for client engagements, ensuring delivery of high-quality services on time and within budget.
- Meet performance goals and objectives as assigned regarding client-specific demands, stated delivery milestones, quality standards, project management framework, mentoring junior staff, and all training activities.
Your Capabilities and Credentials
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Experience working with and analyzing large data sets.
- Working knowledge of and interest in industry standard methods, specifically the Federal Principles, Requirements and Guidelines for accessing benefits of structural and non-structural benefits of proposed projects.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office Excel including quantitative modeling and analysis required.
- Proficiency with PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Microsoft Teams and other business systems required.
- Experience with additional data analysis tools is a plus, including but not limited to Access, Power BI/Tableau, GIS, SQL, IMPLAN, Python, R, etc.
- Excellent written and oral communication and presentation skills.
- Self-starter capable of efficiently and proactively working independently as well as with a geographically dispersed team.
- Intense attention to details as deliverables are open to public review and scrutiny.
- Willing to travel as needed. Travel may be up to 10 percent to 25 percent depending on the assignment.
Traits and Attributes of Top Performers
- Intellectual curiosity: Top performers are driven to ask why things work or don’t work currently and how we might address this—even if, or especially if, this thinking falls outside of conventional wisdom. We need bold thinkers willing to challenge assumptions and develop new solutions.
- Lifelong learners: This field provides ample opportunities to develop new skills and tools, and to combine left and right brain thinking to combine economics, modeling, and an understanding of public perception to solve complex problems. There are few “routine” answers. The most successful candidates have a genuine desire to learn continually to solve our clients’ problems and improve the communities we serve.
- Analytical problem solvers: Top performers understand (or are capable of quickly learning) how different factors, variables, and policies result in corresponding economic and financial impacts. They understand how to make appropriate simplifying assumptions and how to model complex systems accurately.
- Collaboration and co-creation: Successful candidates will have the ability to work effectively on a team, across disciplines with individuals of diverse cultures and abilities in a cooperative and generative manner. Willing to step in and take on additional responsibility for the good of the entire team.
- Creativity and adaptability: Top performers will have the ability to think about a task or a problem in a new or different way, to create strategies for disruption, breakthrough, and transformation.
- Strategic and systematic thinking: Top performers will be able to synthesize different sides of an issue by examining a range of options and outcomes, considering the interconnectedness of elements as parts of a whole system, and by applying economic principles building intellectual frameworks to guide decisions, solve problems, support innovation, and inform analysis and action.
- Entrepreneurial mindset: Strong candidates will both seek and thrive on all opportunities and risks; Top performers will leverage tenacity and optimism to innovate, effect change, break orthodoxies and create new value for clients.
- Sincere desire to please our clients: Top performers seem to have an innate drive, beyond personal gain, for ensuring that our clients are pleased with our performance and our deliverables, and they realize that providing rigorous, error-free, and unbiased advisory services is a critical step in increasing the chances for the client’s and our planet’s long-term sustainability. Top performers draw on this deeper motivation, as it takes time and effort to drive change with our clients.
Education and Experience
- A combination of education and experience will be considered for the successful candidate for this position.
- Master’s Degree or PH.D in economics
- 12+ years of experience. Work experience could include, natural resource economic consulting, or work with federal agencies requiring economic and financial feasibility analyzes of proposed projects including but not limited to US Army Corp of Engineers, US Bureau of Reclamation, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or Tennessee Valley Authority. Prior state or province agency work may also be considered.
This description is not a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that may be required of the employee and other duties, responsibilities and activities may be assigned or may be changed at any time with or without notice.
Stantec is a place where the best and brightest come to build on each other’s talents, do exciting work, and make an impact on the world around us. Join us and redefine your personal best.