Meet Neville Reynolds, PWS, a VHB mainstay for all things coastal design and permitting, whose career spans more than three decades. Dedicated to assisting clients with shoreline and waterfront improvements along the East Coast, Neville has been pivotal in developing sustainable and adaptable solutions that improve waterfront developments and industrial operations, mitigate storm risks, and enhance the resilience of coastal zones. His experience and knowledge have left a legacy on waterfronts that continue to thrive even decades after implementation.
Last year, Neville began a new role as Coastal Engineering and Resilience Growth Leader. We caught up with Neville to delve deeper into this role and explore what it signifies for our clients and projects as we advance this focus area at VHB.
VHB: We’re hearing more and more about coastal engineering and resiliency (CE&R) in our industry, especially within the past five years. Can you define what it means at VHB?
Neville: Resiliency at VHB can be summed up in two words: good design. As leaders in CE&R, we provide clients with the information they need to assess risk under various climate scenarios. This ranges from existing wave, current, storm surge, and rainfall conditions, as well as future changes to these factors due to long-term sea-level rise and storm intensity projections based on the project’s lifespan.
Coupled with a clear understanding of regulatory policy, our multidisciplinary teams can develop appropriate shoreline and waterfront designs that meet our clients’ vision and functional expectations, while being able to resist, absorb or rebound from extreme storm conditions that may intensify over the expected design life of the project. We help our clients arrive at a balance between cost, risk, and longevity based on their tolerance for risk.
VHB: Can you expand on what your new role as Coastal Engineering and Resilience Growth Leader will mean for partners and clients?
Neville: My transition to this focus area signifies a commitment from VHB toward proactively addressing the critical challenges posed by coastal development and environmental resilience to better serve our clients. In addition to my involvement on coastal engineering projects, my experience includes a broader environmental focus, including resource identification, natural systems restoration, and environmental permitting. In my new role, I will leverage this experience and my long-term commitment to integrated thinking to strengthen VHB’s collective capabilities across the East Coast relating to coastal engineering and resiliency, as well as environmental stewardship.
In coastal areas that are particularly dense and urban across our footprint, such as Boston or New York City, integrating resiliency into development is not only beneficial but necessary. However, we understand that the complex regulatory landscape governing coastal infrastructure projects can present challenges that our clients must navigate. This is where our coastal engineering and resilience skillsets really shine, by creating innovative solutions that are constructable and permittable and cater to the unique needs of each project and each state they’re located in.
VHB: How is VHB expanding its coastal and marine engineering capabilities to support growing waterfront infrastructure needs?
Neville: To meet the growing needs of our coastal communities across the East Coast, we are investing in our coastal, marine, and dredging engineering offerings to better support port authorities, private marine terminals, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and municipalities who depend on resilient and well-maintained waterfront infrastructure. This includes:
- Navigational channel improvements
- Dredging engineering
- Disposal site design
- Beach nourishment
- Marina design and layout
- Marine structures, such as bulkheads, fender piles, and other essentials to marine terminals and port authority facilities
Whether it’s strengthening port facilities, improving navigation channels, or protecting shorelines from erosion and storm impacts, these skills are essential for implementing waterfront improvements and coastal resiliency projects that are not only well-designed but built to withstand the changes of the future.
Our experience spans a wide range of community-driven resilience and revitalization efforts, such as the Ohio Creek Watershed and Town of Duck Living Shoreline and Resiliency project in the Mid Atlantic, Dorchester Bay City and Bennington Street in New England, and the Resilient Pinellas project in the Southeast.
VHB: It’s great to see that the CE&R solutions we helped implement 30 years ago are still protecting shorelines and vulnerable areas from flooding, storm surge, and major storms even today. Can you share a project example where resiliency was the outcome, and they are flourishing today?
Neville: Yes, one of our very first major coastal engineering projects was the Yorktown Waterfront Revitalization project in Virginia. Today, this area is a vibrant community asset and a popular beach destination for tourists and locals because of its proximity to Colonial National Historic Parkway, Historic Williamsburg, and Jamestown Island. We started this project from our first Virginia office in the early 1990s to develop a long-term solution toward revitalizing this underutilized community asset that had fallen into disrepair after facing decades of storm events in the Chesapeake Bay.
The first phase of the revitalization, completed in 1993, involved constructing a robust breakwater system. This crucial element that still exists today absorbs energy from incoming waves, limits sand loss from the public beach, and protects infrastructure such as the roadway and riverwalk. This was the foundation of a multi-year redevelopment project that included raising Water Street and the associated drainage system, and constructing a mile long Riverwalk that connects the Waterman’s Museum and National Park Service headquarters for Colonial National Historical Park. These improvements set the stage for a transformational mixed-use development with shops, restaurants, outdoor event spaces, and indoor venues.
The nature-based shore protection engages the waterfront, provides extensive natural areas, and has proven its resiliency for more than 30 years of storm events and sea level rise. Our goal is to further strengthen our skill sets and bench strength to produce similar transformational outcomes for our clients across our footprint.
Similar to how we approach sustainability at VHB, our approach to coastal resiliency includes a holistic mindset toward a project. No matter if you are a traffic engineer, landscape architect, natural scientist, water resource or coastal engineer, or planner, you’re thinking about resiliency as a primary design consideration. This strategic focus not only addresses immediate risk, but also fosters long-term enhancements over the design life of the project.
To find out more about coastal engineering and resiliency, connect with Neville for more information.
