Interview with Brian O’Ferrall

Date: 11/8/2023
Subject: Interview with Brian O’Ferrall
Assessment:
   On the 6th, I had an interview with the VP and Program Manager at EA, Brian O’Ferrall. During this interview, we talked about how I could use Environmental Engineering, what programs EA works with in America and the many specialties we have at his job. Before speaking to Mr. O’Ferrall, I had a particular thought process when it came to environmental engineering, this was that it could be divided into LEED architecture, Water municipality, Soil management, and more niche topics like alternative energy. One of the first things that Mr. O’Ferrall defined for me was that Environmental Engineering is divided into much more specific parts than just that. His example for this was when he asked me what I meant by water municipality. I stated things like “Storm Drains, Sewer Systems, Dams, and Water Towers”. After hearing this, O’Ferrall explained that I just mentioned 3 very distinctly different areas of expertise in Environmental Engineering, “Storm and Sewer Drains are the management of excess dirty water, Dams are for water management and energy production, and water towers are management of clean drinking water”. When he defined this for me I realized how much depth there truly is to the Environmental Engineering field and I have a lot more to learn. 
We then moved to my research, I stated that I was working on a LEED project, and EA, being an Environmental design firm, I assumed had many LEED-certified engineers. O’Ferrall then explained to me that “although we do work in Environmentally friendly design, we don’t work with building design, most of our work is specialized on resource and hazard management”. This came as a surprise because I believed that EA being one of the largest firms for Environmental Projects in America would have LEED certified Engineers but in reality, they have very few. O’Ferrall explained that working with water and toxicity is much more profitable than building LEED-certified buildings. This is because the subsidies for building LEED certified building is still too little to be profitable and in some    cases, existant. 
I realize now that one of the big problems with LEED certification is that the effort to create such a building is not monetarily worth it for the engineers and architects and this must change if we ever want to make Environmentally Friendly architecture a norm in our society.