The pulse of a city rests not in the static, but the mutable—where scaffolds and wrecking balls sway between the rhythms of supply and demand, vision and reality. Few sites in Omaha echo this more audibly than the tract of land from 50th to 72nd between Leavenworth and Center streets.
Sprung from the ill-fated blueprints of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “model communities” initiative in the 1930s, utopia quickly turned to wasteland as the original ‘Aksarben City’ priced out prospective residents. Focus then shifted from residential to entertainment: crooning guitars, thundering hoof beats, and roaring crowds filled the void as the Ak-Sar-Ben Racetrack and Coliseum occupied the space for the remainder of the 20th century until shuttering and eventually demolished in 2005.
With this record in mind, Omaha city planners proposed a “mixed-use” development—a patchwork of corporate, academic, recreational, culinary, and retail enterprise that promised stability vis-a-vis versatility.
In 2019, the Aksarben Village experiment won the ultimate peer endorsement, and the crown jewel of its business facades, with the addition of HDR’s 10-story global headquarters.
It’s from this uniquely chamfered base that HDR’s newly minted CEO, John Henderson—himself a product of shifting trajectories and the requisite ingenuity to scale them—oversees the country’s largest employee-owned architecture and engineering firm.
“I’m not surprised that the headquarters stayed here. We got stationed here with the military, and if you’ve lived in several other cities around the world, you just realize what a special place Omaha is,” said Henderson of where he and his family chose to settle after 16 moves. “It’s a well-run city and it’s a great community. It’s a great place to base your business out of.”
Exacting rationality and boundless imagination have guided HDR over the firm’s 107-year history, and the new CEO is no exception with the schematics of Henderson’s career having faced multiple, unexpected revisions with or without a drafting table. Growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a young Henderson sought short-term gains—funds to continue his civil engineering studies at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology—via a long-term commitment. That commitment, however, not only proved lengthier, but far more rewarding than he’d ever imagined.
“I needed money for college, so I intended to go into the military but only to do my four years of obligated service,” said Henderson, the flicker of a grin stoked by the memory. “And then I was going to get out, and I was going to come back to the Midwest and be an engineer. It took me an entire career to figure out how to do that.”
Henderson served six tours in the Asia-Pacific Region and five assignments with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, three of which found him in active combat zones. During his decades of service, he not only worked with “world class people,” but also sharpened his leadership under spartan conditions. This culminated with a Battalion Commander post in 2013, directing the deployment of 1,000 troops in Afghanistan during the twilight years of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom.’
“In Afghanistan, we had 19 construction platoons, and we were working all over the country, consolidating and cleaning up bases,” Henderson said. “They might be a bulldozer operator or a carpenter, but when they get on the patrols to move, they self-secured […] they’re soldiers by night, carpenters by day. It’s a really fun group of people to work with.”
Retiring from his station as Commander of the Omaha District in 2017, nearly 24 years of decorated military service drew to a close. Henderson approached retirement with a mix of relief and apprehension, “throwing his name in the hat” for a political position behind tempered expectations. A call from Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ team swept any doubts away, and Henderson went into an altogether different type of battlefield: Washington D.C. Nominated for appointment by President Trump in 2017 and later confirmed by the Senate, Henderson assumed office as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Installations, Environment & Energy) and began weekly commutes from Omaha to the Pentagon.
“They’re growing experiences, right? And honestly, once you get to know the system, they’re less scary,” posited Henderson, recalling the handful of times he’d been called in for a committee hearing on Capitol Hill. “We see it through the lens of TV, but I know in the background a lot of these people actually get along pretty well […] They see things differently and they disagree, and by virtue get caught up in the rhetoric. But for the most part, they’re really good people that have the best interest of their constituents in mind.”
While the occasional congressional grill session provided Henderson a front row, if occasionally a blistering seat to legislative theater, it was behind the curtain where Henderson’s mettle was truly tested. In coordination with then Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Henderson directed operational and maintenance projects across 180 Air Force bases globally, an annual portfolio upwards of $15 billion.
When seeking appointees, Mattis had requested “people who know their business,” while Wilson said, “We want to put an engineer in there.” In each case, Henderson rose to the occasion, earning high praise from superiors and subordinates alike until the inevitable change of staff following President Biden’s inauguration.
“With the Corps of Engineers, with the Army construction units, I always just felt this immense pride in being a part of a profession that inherently does good and improves the quality of life for others,” Henderson reflected. “The circumstances were never part of the design—I got to be a colonel in the military and got to command a great engineer district. But remember, my plan was to go into the military, do four years, and get out. But after a couple of combat tours, it’s almost like a calling. The military trains you to serve, and you develop a sense of duty to do that; I found a lot of professional satisfaction in that.
“The political appointment thing was a total fluke. It was a cold call out of nowhere; never even thought about doing that. And the opportunity to come to HDR was the same thing. It was the end of the administration, my family was here in Omaha, I was an engineer, and I just wanted to get back into my profession; I just wanted to do what I got into the profession to do. So, when I first started talking to Eric Keen, I said ‘I’d love to be a part of your company […] I could be a project manager for you, I could probably run a survey crew, I could sweep your floors. Really, I just want to be on a winning team.’”
Keen, HDR CEO from 2017 to 2024, had worked with Henderson client-side for years and was well acquainted with the retired colonel’s cool-headed leadership and engineering chops. In 2021, the latter began his HDR career as Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), quickly ascending to President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2023. When Keen took on the role of executive chairman of HDR’s board of directors in 2024, Henderson was primed to assume the mantle.
“The more I’ve learned about leadership, the more I’ve realized how much I don’t know about leadership,” said Henderson, reflecting on his transition from military command hierarchy to the private sector. “But what I’ve learned is that the fundamental principles are the same: how leaders build strong teams, how they build trust in those teams, how they train those teams to perform well and in a consistent manner, how to build trust with the stakeholders. Those universal concepts of how to do that are the same in the military.
“Now, you have to articulate style […] if you’re in a combat situation, that requires very direct, very quick, concise leadership, because if you’re hesitating, people may get hurt or killed, as opposed to a more corporate setting like this, where you want to take some time and develop buy-in and look at different options to come up with solutions.”
Another similarity is the nature of the ‘stakeholders’ involved. With HDR 100% employee-owned via an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), Henderson’s executive decisions have a ripple effect across the entire company—not unlike a platoon of soldiers and strategic objectives, with no one left behind.
“The thing about working for a 100% employee-owned company, if you’re the CEO, you’re essentially working for all of your shareholders,” Henderson said. “And that means when we post the share price at the end of the year, everybody benefits from the same share price. That’s our way of returning the profits, the results of everybody’s hard work back to everybody in the company—whether you’re a drafting professional or work in our mailroom, whether you’re an engineer—there’s this great story about wealth equity across our company.”
Henderson believes this model has served HDR well in attracting and retaining top talent amid a tight labor market. He also believes the firm’s dedication to sustainability, backed by a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, empowers employees and clients alike when contracts hit the negotiating table. Recent projects testify to this standard, including the design and delivery of the world’s largest indoor hydronic vertical farm, Dubai’s 330,000-square-foot ‘Bustanica’ facility. Henderson noted that such projects reflect “a great ecosystem with a lot of talented professionals,” from designers and engineers to builders and contractors. One particular “outside the process” partnership, however, stirs Henderson’s otherwise stoic demeanor with visible pride.
“In Jackson, Mississippi, you have a city that’s having a crisis, a water crisis, but underneath that, a crisis in trust,” said Henderson, recalling the 2022 flood and subsequent state of emergency that left 150,000 residents without potable water and HDR’s invitation to help revive the city’s neglected water infrastructure. “This is what we do—we go in and help communities be better, provide safe drinking water, safe places to live and work, provide effective transportation networks. Especially in an economically depressed area like Jackson, we felt that with our purpose and aim that was the right thing to do […] there are two or three firms down there working the projects, and it’s going really well. And you know, as soon we signed up for that, we had volunteers from all over the company who wanted to be part of making something better—leaving a legacy of trust in Jackson, Mississippi…”
With payroll exceeding nearly 13,000 individuals in more than 200 offices, such national and international success stories are business as usual. Still, with strong, 107-year-old roots in Omaha, HDR has had, and continues to have, a significant hand in shaping the city’s skyline—including the College World Series’ home at Charles Schwab Field, Midtown Crossing, the revitalized Gene Leahy Mall, and most recently, the Kiewit Luminarium.
Though FDR’s New Deal ‘dream city’ may have never materialized, firms like HDR—with dynamic individuals like Henderson at the helm—are making up for lost time. In Omaha and abroad, yesterday’s ideals are becoming today’s realities, and the heartbeat of tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
“It’s one thing to be good at math and science, but the real innovative part of engineering is that sense of creativity that goes with it,” Henderson affirmed. “The invention, innovation—finding a solution to a problem.”
For more information about HDR, visit hdrinc.com.
This article originally appeared in the June/July 2024 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
