Up until recently, Stantec has shied away from owning or developing intellectual properties (IP). However, with the creation of the Innovation Office—and Bill’s role as intellectual property senior advisor—the Company demonstrated it would now strategically recognize and protect the contributions of our most inventive people.
Bill works with Stantec innovators to identify the protectible elements of their ideas and collaborate on whether and how to deploy IP tools to prevent those elements from being lost. Besides the compelling financial reasons to convert good ideas into IP, this process can also develop the business: diversifying client opportunities, creating new kinds of revenue streams, and cultivating and supporting the careers of thought-leading employees. Currently, Bill is working with a publisher to revive, update, and rebrand a legacy water treatment textbook as a Stantec guide designed for the digital age.
With a background that combines water and transportation engineering with land use permitting and law, Bill works at the intersection of ideas, risk management, legal process, and strategy. When he isn’t at work, he’d like to be sailing, or biking, but over the last year he and his family have spent most of their time rehabilitating their 140-year-old house.