Executive edge: Robert Uhler; Head of engineering giant MWH gained perspective from Vietnam.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: MWH Global Inc. - Robert Uhler - Biography

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Bob Uhler's first concern was for the welfare of 40 MWH Global Inc. employees in the heart of the flooded city.

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"Our offices were flooded, the windows were blown out and once the storm passed we had to find our employees, and that took seven days," said the president and CEO of the billion-dollar Broomfield-based environmental engineering company that employs 6,100 in 36-plus countries.

MWH had a 15-year history with the City of New Orleans water and wastewater treatment programs, so after relocating their families to Kansas City, Mo., and Michigan, MWH employees went into action--disconnecting sewer lines, taking inventory of damaged lines and engineering ways to drain the city in anticipation of the next storm.

"Our people were incredible, putting in 18-hour days, seven days a week, sloshing through miles and miles of devastation--the worst natural disaster I have ever seen," said Uhler, who has witnessed a lot in his 28 years with the company, logging more than 4 million air miles traveling the globe. "We were worried about their safety and the environmental conditions. But the city had turned to us for help in the aftermath and we were proud our people wanted to get the city back on its feet."

Not since frontline combat in Vietnam as a 23-year-old commander of a 125-soldier unit of the 101st Airborne division has Uhler witnessed such devastation. The son of a West Point graduate, Uhler himself graduated from West Point.

"I wanted to go to Vietnam because I thought I would have wasted the training had I not," said Uhler. "But after the war I came to the conclusion that you were so turned off by the destruction you had seen that you wanted to do something constructive, and I had a very strong urging to do something constructive.

"There was this new rising field called environmental engineering; there were discussions about improving waterways, making streams fishable; Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' had just come out," recalls Uhler. "And I thought environmental engineering would be something...