As we celebrate this ten year milestone, we wanted to reflect on our senior civilian leadership. Our head civilian provides the important continuity to our District in comparison with our two year rotation cycle of the District Commander. Bill Stein was our Deputy District Engineer for Programs and Project Management, or DPM, from 2003 to 2013. He retired after nearly 40
years of service to our nation. Lisa Metheney filled his shoes starting in January of 2014. As Metheney was previously Stein’s deputy, she was able to hit the ground running after she was selected for this executive role. Metheney is one of a handful of female DPMs around the country and is one of the youngest.
In his last five years as DPM, Stein says he is most proud of the growth the District made in the area of outreach and reimbursable work. “A drastic movement was started to plant seeds with other federal organizations so that we could do design and construction work for them,” said Stein. “At the start, we knew we didn’t have the expertise to accomplish the
work, but we knew that we did have sister districts that could be utilized.” Once known as just a small “dredging only” District, we are now busy with millions of work for Department of Defense, plus a host of other federal agencies. Since retirement, Stein and his wife are enjoying traveling to parts of our country they hadn’t seen before and have even taken a few
international trips. Being able to spend so much time with their five grandchildren has been his greatest joy.
Metheney says it seems more like five days ago than five years ago since she began this fun, but tough job. “I truly believe this is the best job in the Corps,” says Metheney. “Though there are challenging and long days and days when it seems nothing is going right, there are far more days when I leave the office with a sense of accomplishment for the work that has been done and the problems that have been solved.”
She has enjoyed watching the District’s largest project, the Charleston Harbor Post 45 Deepening project, continue to have such great success. She was the Civil Works Chief when this project kicked off and was knee deep in the day-to-day technical aspects of the project. Now she is involved only in the much bigger picture of the project, responsible for communicating
with our Division, Headquarters and our Congressional delegation on its progress. Although this is the largest project in the District’s history, she is proud of our smaller successes as well. “I am so proud to be a member of the Charleston team where
employees give their best every day,” said Metheney. “It is an honor and a privilege to serve as the District’s head civilian and I will do my best to keep moving the District forward the next ten years.”