We are pleased to announce that Dallas/Ft. Worth Chapter member Kelvin Kennedy, CPD, GPD, CD, FASPE, has been named PM Engineer magazine’s 2023 Plumbing Engineer of the Year. Kelvin is a former President of ASPE’s Dallas/Ft. Worth Chapter, former ASPE Region 5 Director, and former ASPE Vice President, Membership, and he was chosen “due to his passion for the plumbing industry, dedication to leadership, and commitment to teaching the next generation of plumbing engineers,” according to the magazine.
As the October 2023 cover story of PM Engineer explains further, Kelvin started in the industry as a board draftsman in 1985, working for a company in Tysons, Virginia. Five years later, he moved to another company called HDR in Alexandria, Virginia, where he got his first taste of plumbing design.
“They put me in a group where two men took me under their wings—Ronald Ledbetter and David Kornegay,” Kelvin says. “These were two men of color who were plumbing designers for the company. It’s there I started the seeds of learning actual plumbing design and drafting. These two men showed me this is an actual career I could learn by being mentored by other individuals. I was there for two years before moving to Dallas in 1992 with an opportunity to further my career in plumbing design with HDR’s local office there. Unfortunately, I was laid off a year later. A former worker who had left the company to work for Carter Burgess hired me. It was there I met my mentor, the late Ellis K. Chadick. This was the man who taught me plumbing design—he’s the person I credit with being the plumbing design engineer I am today.”
Kelvin’s career is also greatly influenced by his late mother and father. His father, a self-taught mechanic with a third-grade education, could not read, but instilled in his sons the value of hard work and education, while his mother instilled in him the importance of contributing to society.
“My father was 53 years old when I was born—he did whatever it took to provide for us while my mother stayed home to raise my younger brother and I,” Kelvin explains. “My father was a hard worker with grease on his hands, but at the end of the day, all I ever saw that man in was suits and ties. He loved custom made suits, shoes, and ties. He instilled that work ethic in me—to this day, all I know is hard work and taking care of my two kids. So don’t let the clothes fool you; beneath all that is a very hardworking, dedicated person.”
Currently, Kelvin is a Senior Plumbing Designer, Project Manager, and Studio Leader for RTM Engineering Consultants in Dallas and was recently made a minority owner in the firm.
“In my year and a half with RTM, I was given more opportunities here than in any of my previous places of employment over the past 30 years,” he says. “I owe all of that to David Lippe, who’s one of the principals here in the Dallas office. When this opportunity came about two years ago, I jumped at it. David has taught me all the things I’ve wanted in this career beyond senior level plumbing design. He gave me the opportunity to be client-facing and to manage and develop projects, allowing me to grow and learn within this position. Becoming a minority partner in the firm was beyond my wildest dreams. Over all my years within this industry, this is the first time I can say I’m somewhere where I know I’m going to retire.”
Kelvin remembers a time when Lippe pulled him into his office and told him, “Buckle up, it’s your time now.”
“And I’ve been growing ever since,” he says. “I can’t thank him enough for the opportunity he has given me at RTM.”
When it comes to being successful in the plumbing engineering field, Kelvin says it’s all about the “P-word,” meaning passion.
“You have to have passion for this career, for this industry,” he says. “I put it into perspective by telling people I see myself as an artist. You take a blank canvas, which is an architectural background, and then you put all these different colors on it, all these different line weights, all these different line styles, and when it comes together, it looks like a Picasso painting. Only those in the plumbing engineering field know what we are looking at because we know what it took to bring this ‘masterpiece’ together as an engineered system that works.”
To read the entire feature story, visit PM Engineer’s website.
