Tiffany Shaw grew up loving to build and fix things with her father. She never knew this love for problem solving would lead her into engineering. Tiffany is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a BS degree in civil engineering. Shaw is a professional engineer in multiple states and currently is the Director of Design for Haskell’s Water market and the market leader for Haskell’s Industrial Water market. Shaw works with a variety of clients, including municipal and industrial, to design and construct a variety of water and wastewater treatment facilities. Some of her clients represent products customers use in their everyday life, including those in food and beverage, consumer package goods, pet, pulp and paper sectors.
Shaw joined Haskell in 2014 and now leads a team of people in Jacksonville, Florida. Aside from making sure facilities use safe, clean water, her team also designs solutions to properly treat and discharge wastewater by using a streamlined approach.
She helps clients decide the correct strategy through a single point of responsibility that oversees all of the client’s water and wastewater needs.
“We are really trying to provide full service solutions for our clients,” Shaw said. “Everyone we are working with has a wastewater need.”
Many of Haskell’s projects have short timelines, such as the Muller and Quaker Dairy Yogurt Processing Facility in New York. The company was entering the domestic yogurt market and needed a state-of-the-art wastewater pre-treatment facility on a short timeline because of consumers’ growing demand for Greek yogurt. The project earned an ABC Excellence in Construction Award and an ABC Green Project of the Year Award.
She also often works with public utility companies. JEA is Florida’s largest community-owned utility, and it had a 42-inch sewer force main at the bottom of the St. Johns River that had no backup. A failure would affect more than 55,000 customers. Her team designed a 4,200-foot sewer force main, horizontally drilled under the St. Johns River. The new backup option should provide reliable service for at least 40 to 50 years. The project earned an ABC Safety Project of the year award.
Projects like these can be complicated, but Shaw said she enjoys designing facilities that can sometimes have obstacles to overcome.
“There are new challenges that are emerging, from pharmaceuticals to aging infrastructure,” she said. “All those things kind of change, and [we have to monitor] how the industry reacts to it and what has to be done.”
Shaw is particularly passionate about one gradual industry change: creating facilities that use safe and environmentally conscious utilities.
She’s an accredited Envision Sustainability Professional from the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, which encourages systemic changes of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. She’s only one of 8,000 in the world who has this designation.
Shaw is the Chair of the Haskell Women’s Network, which was formed two years ago to explore gender equality in the industry with new guidelines and policies. It also provides mentoring and networking opportunities.
Shaw participating in the "Discussing Things That Matter" panel discussion in March 2019 hosted by the Haskell Women's Network.
