Molly Titus, a project manager with Cranston-based DiPrete Engineering, recently celebrated her fifth anniversary with the firm. She has 16 years of experience in the field, which she entered after obtaining a degree in civil engineering from the University of Rhode Island.
Her current projects include the repurposing of the former Sheffield School in Newport into the Newport TechWorks Innovation Center, the Longplex Family and Sports Center in Tiverton and the new Portsmouth Police Station. She spoke recently with the Providence Business News about her career.
PBN: What interested you in an engineering career?
TITUS: My dad is an engineer. He was civil as well, and then he went into construction and built subways in New York City. He had his own business, so I used to go to projects with him and see things being built. That was it. There was never anything else, from when I can remember. I was 6. It was never a question.
PBN: What are some of the biggest challenges that face engineers in development? Is it site remediation, or the intrusion of water? What are you running into more than anything else?
TITUS: I would say the biggest challenge is all the good sites are gone. All the vacant land is gone. Everything is a reuse, a repurposing. You end up dealing with remediation or former uses and trying to right past wrongs. These sites, anything left has some sort of cloud. Whether it’s contamination or flood plain, or even just … there’s a wetland in the middle of it. If you think of Route 2, everything there is redevelopment. You’re not going to put up a big box, you’re going to take something down and repurpose the parcel.
PBN: What has been the most challenging project in your career with DiPrete?
TITUS: We did a CarMax on Route 2, in Warwick. At that point, Route 2 is a federal highway. So, getting the curb cut was a solid yearlong process. It’s a federal highway. We had to get approval from the federal government to break that curb cut. That used to be Building 19, but it did not have a driveway on that side. It was on Route 2 North, just north of the mall. And it’s in two towns, Warwick and Cranston. It was also a building that had 2 feet of water in it, in 2010. So, you name it, it had it. That [project] took almost three years.
PBN: How do you tell a client that something isn’t going to work out? How is that communicated? Or is there always an engineering solution?
TITUS: It’s always a face-to-face meeting. Physically, with engineering, there is always a way around. Whether or not it’s an affordable solution is always … You can fix or solve anything, with a certain number that goes along with it. Whether that number works with what the client has in mind is [another issue.] You can meet with them, and go over other options. So maybe their project won’t work, but something smaller in scope.
PBN: Has your career been what you expected, or what you initially thought it would be?
TITUS: I’m going to vote no. In your mind, engineers do a lot of design work. In site/civil, we design sites, and design utilities, but the biggest challenges are typically different regulations and different regulators. In Rhode Island, every town regulates things differently. Massachusetts, it’s a little more consistent. But in Massachusetts, they regulate wetlands at a town level. [In] Rhode Island, it’s the state level. We spend more than half of our time trying to get permits.
Mary MacDonald is a staff writer for the PBN. Contact her at MacDonald@PBN.com.
