NO ONE REALLY GROWS UP INTERESTED IN WASTEWATER, Bailey Keller pointed out. But water itself is another story. For Keller, who studied at the University of Arkansas surrounded by natural resources, water became a way to think about impact, sustainability, and the infrastructure decisions that develop cities.
“I knew I wanted to do something that had a bigger impact than myself and that would last longer than myself,” Keller said. “Water is the key to really everything. We use it to live, grow crops, produce energy, and sustain ecosystems. And so that part to me was really cool; it’s foundational for everything.”
Before university, she’d imagined herself doing something creative like graphic design or teaching art, she said, not realizing at the time how creative engineering could be. But a high school intro to engineering class gave her a clearer picture of what the field could be. So did being discouraged from pursuing it.
“Early on, I had been discouraged from pursuing engineering, which kind of inspired me to pursue it more, to figure out for myself whether I really liked it,” Keller said.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
Today, Keller works in water and wastewater master planning, helping cities understand what their infrastructure needs now and what it may need years into the future. That can mean forecasting population growth, projecting water demand and wastewater flows, building and calibrating system models, evaluating emergency or operational scenarios, and helping municipalities prioritize projects before problems become harder and more expensive to solve.
The workflow follows a similar framework from one city to another. Keller and her team start by talking with the city, collecting historical water demand and wastewater flow data, and using that information to build tools and models. From there, they calibrate those models with real-world data before developing recommendations.
But the plan itself has to be specific to the place. “Every city has their own very unique needs and unique challenges and growth patterns,” she said. “No master plan looks exactly alike, and everything is very tailored to the utility.”
Some cities can be more challenging than others, she added. It depends on what stage a municipality is in and how its system is established. A very young city with a lot of growth predicted for its future will need many improvements throughout its lifetime for the system to function properly.
“Listening to the people who work at the utility, the stakeholders, the operators, the staff who know their system best, and what keeps them up at night and what goals they have, that’s really key to making a master plan successful and one that people actually trust and do something with instead of it just sitting on a shelf,” she said.
The job doesn’t end when the recommendations are ready. If a great master plan comes from being a good listener, a successful one depends on being a great communicator.
“You can do all these technical things, but if you can’t communicate it to the person that actually makes the decision, then nothing will ever happen to that plan,” she said. “So being able to communicate really technical information to people who don’t live in the water-wastewater realm is really important to making the master plan go somewhere or be meaningful.”
“Providing younger engineers a seat at the table to contribute goes a long way. People can think younger folks don't know what’s going on or discount their ideas. But ultimately, they’re going to be running this. We’re making decisions today for them in the future.”
—Bailey Keller, Water & Wastewater Master Planning Engineer, Freese & Nichols
Keller feels like her hobby is being a mom, since most of her free time is spent with her 10-month-old daughter. “But outside of that I really enjoy painting, and a side quest I’m on right now is latte art.” She can already make a heart and has her sights set on a leaf.
Making a Splash
Today’s recommendations have to account for the people who will be living with those choices years later. Keller minored in sustainability, which she credits for how she thinks about the long view.
“It’s helped me with my job and understanding the impact of decisions, and the impact that you don’t always think about, like how it could impact a community. We're looking out over the next five, 10, 25 years,” she said.
Another exciting development is AI tools. Keller and her team have been using them to help process and analyze data, and she is especially interested in how those tools could eventually make infrastructure models more dynamic.
“Moving forward, it’ll be really cool to see how AI can be used to make the tools we have more real-time,” she said.
Outside her work at Freese & Nichols, Keller has been active in professional organizations, including the Texas American Water Works Association (TAWA), where she serves as vice president of the Houston-area chapter.
“I really wanted to get to know other people in the industry who were also working on water, wastewater, and what challenges they’re seeing,” she said. “I wanted to volunteer and give back to the industry, and set up events that help people learn about water-wastewater challenges.”
Her advice to engineering organizations is to make sure younger engineers are genuinely included, not only invited into the room. Providing younger engineers a seat at the table to contribute goes a long way.
“People can think younger folks don’t know what’s going on or discount their ideas. But ultimately, they’re going to be running this. We’re making decisions today for them in the future,” she said.
For young engineers, she recommends showing up consistently, volunteering your time, and maybe signing up for things that make you uncomfortable at first.
“Saying yes will go a long way,” she said. “Opportunities will open up for you, and it’s also really rewarding and exciting to get to be a part of it all.”
Sarah Alburakeh is strategic content editor.
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