FHWA Works: Employee Spotlight - Jean Nehme

Full Name: Jean Nehme
Title: Team Leader
Division/Department: Office of Research, Technology, and Development
Location (City/State): McLean, VA

1. What is your current position and how long have you been in this role?
   I am the Team Leader for the Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) team which is one of four teams within the Office of Infrastructure R&D located at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, VA. I have been in this position since August 7, 2017.

   The LTIP team manages two major long-term research efforts: The Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) and the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) programs. Both research programs resulted from enacted transportation legislation and have a similar mission of helping the highway infrastructure owners and operators to better understand bridge and pavement performance.

2. What is your typical workday like?
   Besides the common tasks that most of us perform during a typical workday, such as replying to e-mails, going to meetings, and teleconferencing or “webinaring”, from time to time, I get to experience a few seconds of work related jubilation. Research is intense and requires perseverance and tenacity. When, after a long trek, successful results are achieved or a new innovative product or tool is released, joy descends on my team members and me. However, as typical with engineers (read “introverts”), celebrations are muffled and concluded quickly so that we could tackle the next problem.

3. What has been your biggest accomplishment over the last year?
   Over the last year, my team continued to accomplish many of our programs’ goals. A major accomplishment that I would like to highlight is the development and subsequent release of the Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program’s InfoBridge™. InfoBridge is a user-friendly Web application that includes intuitive tools for finding, viewing, and analyzing bridge performance information. It provides for storage, retrieval, dissemination, analysis, and visualization of data collected through State, national, and LTBP Program efforts. Our goal is to make LTBP InfoBridge™ a comprehensive resource that will enable researchers to develop tools and products that will enhance the understanding of the performance of highway bridge assets, leading to more efficient design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, preservation, and management of bridges.

4. Prior to working at FHWA, what was the most unusual or interesting job you've ever had?
   The most interesting job that I have ever had prior to working at FHWA was Arizona’s State Bridge Engineer. In that capacity, I was responsible for all aspects of Bridge Engineering for the Arizona Department of Transportation, which included design, inspection, construction support, preservation, and management. Every day brought with it different challenges and opportunities from construction mishaps to urgent inspection findings to personnel issues to bridge preservation funding.

5. What are your hobbies in your spare time?
   I used to look forward to playing basketball every weekend but that was 10 years ago. Nowadays, my hobbies tend to involve activities that are less “structurally” demanding on my joints. As an example, I enjoy driving the wonderful and exciting Virginia and Maryland backroads on weekends.

6. What is one of the biggest lessons you have learned in your career to get you where you are today?
   I learned that one should find a position that he or she enjoys. Few people can succeed in their career without being passionate about what they do. If I could add another lesson, I would say that employees should not worry too much about office silos and focus on the agency, as a whole, achieve its mission (put the good of the entire agency ahead of the good of their own office). Lastly, establish and participate in a culture of trust, it takes a long while to develop relationships built on trust while it takes a single action to destroy these relationships.

7. Complete this sentence: "People would be surprised if they knew..."
   That until I transferred to the University of New Mexico during my junior year, my education was exclusively in French and that I started to speak English when I was 20 years old.