Instructors

Walter L. Graf, Jr. is program director for the Strategic Asset Management and the Intelligent Water Research Challenges at The Water Research Foundation. He led development of the asset management software – TEAMS, served as asset management subject matter expert at USEPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, and conducted financial analysis and modeling for small water and wastewater utilities. Walter has been an invited speaker on asset management, intelligent water systems, and workforce issues at numerous conferences and venues. He is a member of the Virginia Tech Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) Center and served on the Scientific and Program Committee for the Leading Edge Sustainable Asset Management Conference (LESAM 2017) and LESAM 2013. Walter has a Bachelor’s degree in Geology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an MBA in Finance from The George Washington University.

Celine Hyer, PE, is the National Conveyance Service Line Leader within ARCADIS and is located in their Tampa Florida office. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology. Celine has 28 years of experience in Engineering with 18 years that are directly related to asset management program implementations for large utilities across the United States including strategy, condition and risk assessments, CMMS implementations, risk based capital planning, and full program implementation in accordance with ISO 55000 requirements. Ms. Hyer is a certificate holder in the principles of asset management from the Institute of Asset Management and currently serves as the Vice Chair of the AWWA Asset Management Committee, the Secretary of the AWWA Water Main Condition Assessment Committee and the Chairwoman of the Industry Advisory Board for the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Center at Virginia Tech.

Gage has more than 25 years’ engineering and management consulting experience focused on water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure. Gage is a Principal Consultant with GHD’s North America Asset Advisory Group and serves as the technical lead for GHD’s utility asset management engagements. He is a recognized thought leader in asset management and has led numerous implementations, workshops, training sessions, and presentations on asset management. As part of the Advanced Asset Management Course, Gage uses his experience with real world implementations to provide practical examples of applying asset management theory through practice. Gage is a professional engineer and a board certified environmental engineer. He has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering degree from Texas A&M University and Master of Environmental Engineering degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Sunil Sinha is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of Sustainable Water Infrastructure Management (SWIM) Center at Virginia Tech. He is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award recipient in the area of sustainable infrastructure management systems. Dr. Sinha’s research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused in the areas of asset management, sustainability, pattern recognition, sensor informatics, and resilient infrastructure, especially water systems. He has documented and disseminated the results and findings from research work in over 300 publications in technical referred journals, technical conference proceedings, and technical reports. Dr. Sinha was seed behind “90-minutes” PBS documentary titled “Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure,” that throws light on a long-buried problem -- America’s aging water systems. He has given many NPR interviews and featured as a water infrastructure expert in a History Channel documentary titled “The Crumbling of America.” Recently, he launched two national database websites: WATERiD (www.waterid.org) National Knowledgebase and PIPEiD (www.pipeid.org) National Water Pipeline Modeling Platform.