Timothy McClain Shell, P.E., F.ASCE, for nearly 30 years the responsible charge of important capital improvement projects for the San Diego County Water Authority and the City of Vista, California, has been named a Fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
For both SDCWA and Vista, Shell’s projects have included municipal transportation, water conveyance, drainage, parks and building projects. The past 20 years he has been employed by the City of Vista, currently serving as a principal civil engineer. Prior to his employment there, he spent seven years at SDCWA. While working on innovative water conveyance projects for the county, Shell sought to advance the civil engineering profession by coauthoring and presenting one technical paper on prestressed concrete cylinder pipe issues at the ASCE Pipeline Conference (September 1999), and another on putting customer service into practice at the AWWA Water Environment Conference (April 2000).
Shell has served the civil engineering community in San Diego since he was a student at San Diego State University. He was a member and officer of the ASCE Student Chapter and competed at the 1985 Pacific Southwest Conference on their Concrete Canoe team, the Surveying team, and the Popsicle Stick Bridge competition. After graduation, he became an Associate Member and held multiple offices in the Younger Member Forum, eventually serving as President.
He was elected to the ASCE San Diego Section as a Director in 2008. He is best known at the San Diego Section for conducting four successful educational seminars as Director, implementing a series of financial controls and documenting the financial record-keeping procedures as Treasurer, planning and conducting a well-attended and highly entertaining annual awards event at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego as Vice President, and scheduling informational speakers and obtaining sponsors for all of the Section Lunch meetings as President-Elect.
Serving as Section President in 2013-14, he coordinated a strategic planning session, implemented organizational changes to streamline Board meetings, and implemented Board appointment of Student Chapter practitioner advisors. In 2015 when the San Diego Section was celebrating its Centennial anniversary, Shell obtained an ASCE SPAG grant, raised additional support, and coordinated with authors and the San Diego History Center to publish an edition of the Journal of San Diego History commemorating 100 years of Civil Engineering Excellence in San Diego.
Shell was recognized as the Outstanding Civil Engineer in Public Service by ASCE Region 9 in 2008. He was elected to the Vallecitos Water District Board of Directors in 2008 and served two four-year terms. Vista recognized him for his service to the city with the Outstanding Manager Award in 2004. He was also named the Outstanding Graduate for the SDSU College of Engineering in 1985, and for the CSUSM College of Business Administration in 1996.
A professional civil engineer in California, he holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from San Diego State University and an MBA from California State University, San Marcos, with an emphasis in government management.
