Meet the President: Shea E. McNease, P.E.

Shea McNease has resided in the Hattiesburg area for eighteen years. A graduate of Mississippi State University, Shea has been employed with Shows, Dearman and Waits throughout his 18 years of residence in the hub city and is the current president of SDW.

Q&A With the President

What made you choose this career?

Shea: “My initial attraction was a love for construction. As I began to learn more about the field, I developed a love for the way civil engineers impact communities in both subtle and very noticeable ways. Though unseen many times, our profession helps make community and civilization possible.”

What are some of the professional accomplishments that you are most proud of?

Shea: “Obtaining my professional engineering license, being invited to partnership in SDW, and helping to carry on the legacy of an almost 60-year-old company for the last 15 years.”

What are your core values and how do they affect how you do your job?

Shea: “I was given a deep sense of family and community in my upbringing. Generally, I wake up each day with the goal of bettering the communities that I am invited to work in and hopefully creating better lives for the families who call them home.”

Let’s get personal. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Shea: “I am passionate about hunting and fishing, but do not get to do either as much as I would like. Most of my time outside of work is spent in youth rodeo, youth football, or with other sports involving my kids.”

It would be impossible to say we have fully introduced you to our President, Shea McNease, without sharing his words which have been permanently affixed to the walls of Shows, Dearman and Waits. Shea’s words, which have become the touchstone of the company, read as follows:

The Ideal

The term “civil” alludes to connectivity. In our business, we work with the connections of infrastructure: whether it be roads, sidewalks, bridges, pipe networks, or drain ways. These are all physical connections that provide for community, or “civil”-ization. The word “civil” also alludes to communal or human connections; that is, the connection between communities or human beings – how we treat each other, and how we view ourselves in the context of a community. It’s how we participate in something bigger than ourselves. When we seek to fulfill both of these definitions of the word civil, it requires our profession to seek a higher calling.

The External Reality

What we face as we seek to answer to that higher calling is, we confront a progressing world. It is a world that is advancing and ever changing; yet, also a world of finite resources, opposing stakeholder interests, financial limitations, and competing economic pressure that demands civic leadership beyond the skills learned in engineering school.

The Positioning

While we see this as a picture of what we face today, it’s also a picture of what our founding partners saw many years ago; and it’s why they built and instilled in SD-W the willingness to accept the civic leadership mantle required of a citizen engineer. It’s a mantle characterized by team-building, consensus-management, listening, communicating, and shaping the vision of the communities and clients with which we work. From this new and expanded position, they established in us a promise to deliver on a combination of technical, economic, social, and environmental values. It’s a promise of new economic opportunity, strong environmental stewardship, and significant social benefits. A promise to develop a world in which progress is defined by the increased quality of life, welfare, and safety of the public, and it’s a promise to see that progress realized through the professional contributions we make.

The Bar

The mantra that this clarifies for us – that we strive to live out every day – is to Be The Bar. Not to achieve the bar. Not just to set the bar. But to every day be that bar. Be that standard.

When we do that, we answer the higher calling, and when we answer the higher calling, we’re not just engineering projects, we’re Engineering Progress!

Shea McNease, P.E., President