Grant Holland

Grant Holland, the director of WSA’s public-private initiatives practice, began his career in 1982 as chief assistant to the chairman of the Arizona Corporate Commission, the state’s public utility commission. In this role he worked with policy makers, lawyers, bankers, and other decision makers, and this experience in dealing with high-level people in government and private industry provided the background he needed to begin working with public-private partnerships. Since then he has held executive and management positions in the infrastructure and development industries. He worked for InterWest Company, which in the mid-1990s managed the development of toll road projects including several in Minnesota, Washington, California, Arizona, and South Carolina in which Wilbur Smith Associates participated. He was recruited to join WSA in 2001 as a senior project manager with the toll finance and technology group, and he initially specialized in privatization work. He has focused primarily on large public-private partnerships for transportation, and has also participated in P3 and privatization efforts for parking and water/wastewater ventures. He has been involved in projects with a combined value of more than $30 billion. Grant identified public-private initiatives as an emerging niche market and positioned WSA to take advantage of the opportunities it offers. He developed and now leads WSA’s alternative delivery systems practice, providing advisory services on P3 procurement and development to state and other public agencies and overseeing work for private P3 clients. He has been successful in helping a number of state departments of transportation to focus on public-private partnerships and approach them in a more thoughtful manner, and he is one of only a handful of professionals who has worked with a nation to develop P3 and public toll authority processes. He led a team in developing a network of 5,800 kilometers of toll roads for the Republic of India connecting the major metropolitan areas of Delhi, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.