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Growth Mindset: Nathan Beil’s Legacy of Expansion and Excellence at KCI Technologies

Nathan Beil’s engineering journey almost ended before it began.

Raised by a roofing contractor and the first in his family to graduate high school, Beil did not start out with a carefully charted path or a lifelong passion for engineering. It was his mother’s vision, and her insistence that her sons pursue opportunities beyond the family’s roots in farming and contracting, that led him to Lehigh University in the late 1970s to study civil engineering.

Beil ran into trouble early on. He struggled with the foundational concept of free-body diagrams in structural engineering and was even advised by a professor to reconsider his choice of major. “He said, ‘Son, I strongly suggest that you give up engineering right now,’” Beil recalled. “If you want me to do something, tell me I can’t do it. That, combined with a Pennsylvania Dutch stubborn streak, meant I was going to become a civil engineer.”

That determination paid off. Beil earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees with a focus on water resources and began his career at KCI Technologies in an entry-level position. Within four years, he launched the firm’s water resources division. In just six years, he became a vice president. Over time, his leadership roles expanded to include President, CEO, and eventually Chairman of the firm.

“I’ve come to realize that I grow things for a living—organizations and people,” he said. His early work, expanding the water resources division from a team of two to 25, culminated in securing the top hydraulic contract with the State Highway Administration within just two years.

But growth wasn’t without setbacks. When that same contract was not renewed, despite positive performance, Beil had to quickly find new projects to keep those team members employed. “If we don’t have enough work for good people, that becomes my worst day on the job,” he said. That experience cemented his philosophy: “There’s always an opportunity. It might not be where you are or what you’re doing, but you have to go figure out where it is and how to get it.”

His career has been defined by a willingness to take on hard tasks, often stepping in personally to ensure success. Following a major bridge collapse in the Midwest in the late 1980s, he led KCI’s efforts to secure bridge scour contracts, including one for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, one of the world’s largest suspension bridges.

Not all challenges were technical. In the early 1990s, Beil was asked to lead a major project for North Carolina’s Department of Transportation. The assignment required regular presence in Raleigh—just as his first child was born. “So, I would find myself driving to Raleigh on Sunday afternoons, working the week, driving home Saturday morning, spend a week at home, then a week in Raleigh. I did that for two and a half years.”

Beil’s leadership was further tested in the mid-1990s when he was asked to revitalize KCI’s environmental group, which was facing operational challenges. Early on, several contracts were lost due to performance concerns, highlighting the need for a new direction. Through direct intervention and a bold, unconventional hire, Beil helped reshape the group, building a 30-person energy services team within a year. Today, that unit generates nearly $80 million in annual revenue.

His eye for emerging trends also led him to pursue Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, contracts early on. Collaborating with KCI’s IT staff, he secured the largest GIS contract in Baltimore’s history at the time: a $3.5 million project that required hiring over 100 people in just three weeks and maintaining 24-hour operations for months.

Nate Beil - Nursery Road Job Site

Later, as President and CEO, Beil initiated a company-wide transformation, overhauling KCI’s accounting, HR, and business practices while reshaping the firm’s corporate culture. The rollout began in 2012 and set the stage for a decade of sustained growth. “We’ve made every budget and growth projection since 2013,” he said.

Under Beil’s leadership, KCI’s annual revenue has grown from $130 million to over $500 million. As an employee-owned company, it has also seen share values increase by 20 percent annually, creating more than 80 employee millionaires. KCI has additionally been named The Baltimore Sun’s top workplace among large firms and earned recognition as Engineering News-Record’s Mid-Atlantic Design Firm of the Year.

After more than four decades of impact, Nathan Beil’s story stands as a testament to perseverance, innovation, and an unwavering belief in people. For his commitment and dedication to the industry, he is the recipient of this year’s MDSPE Industry Icon Award, a fitting recognition for a leader who has shaped not just a company, but the future of engineering leadership.

Please join us in celebrating Nathan Beil as the MDSPE Industry Icon on May 13th at the annual Engineers Reception & Awards Night at the historic Engineers Club in Baltimore.

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Nathan Beil Bio

Nathan Beil PE, D.WRE | Chairman of the Board, KCI

Nathan Beil joined KCI in 1988, and within four years, he started the company’s water resources division, which quickly grew to a team of 21 and became one of KCI’s top-performing business units. In 1994, he was promoted to vice president and the following year to senior vice president. Beil led the firm’s environmental group from 1995 to 2001, adding three new service lines—public utilities (now the communications design, power, and utility services practices), subsurface utility engineering, and geographic information systems (now geospatial solutions and asset management practices). He was then promoted to executive vice president, responsible for managing the four operating groups that made up the Mid-Atlantic region. Beil was promoted to president in 2006, growing our incredible team from 900 to more than 1,500 and significantly expanding the firm’s geographic footprint. He led KCI’s expansion to Texas where over 200 professionals currently work. During his tenure as president, and much to his credit, KCI was named Engineering News Record’s Mid-Atlantic Design Firm of the Year and the Baltimore Sun’s top workplace among large firms in 2017. Beil assumed the role of CEO in 2018 and chairman in 2021. He is a two-time graduate of Lehigh University, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1983 and 1987, respectively. He completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration in 2000 and the American Council of Engineering Companies Senior Executive Institute in 2006. He is a registered professional engineer in Delaware and Maryland and a Diplomate of Water Resources Engineering. Throughout his career, Beil has been dedicated to improving the profession, the region and his community, and currently serves on the executive committee of The Design Professionals Coalition (DPC) and is the past chair of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce and the Design Professional Risk Control Group. He also serves on Lehigh University’s Masters of Structural Engineering Advisory Board as well as the boards of directors for the Scouting America, the Woodmont Chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America, and the Maryland Transportation Builders & Materials Association (MTBMA). Nate is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Water Resources Association (AWRA) and the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). A long-time supporter of the Boy Scouts of America, he is the past President of the Baltimore Area Council and has been recognized with the National Outstanding Eagle Scout and Silver Beaver Awards.

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Ship Collision Risks Webinar

Join us on February 12th for an opportunity to hear from Michael Shields,  a Professor of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University specializing in risk assessment.

Hosted by the Maryland Society of Professional Engineers (MDSPE), participants will receive 1 PDH for this event.

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Mike Shields Bio

Michael D. Shields, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Civil & Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University

Michael D. Shields is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Civil & Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins University where he is also the Director of the Center on High-Throughput Materials Discovery for Extremes (HT-MAX), holds a secondary appointment in the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, and is a fellow of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute. Prof. Shields conducts research in uncertainty quantification (UQ) and probabilistic modeling for problems in structural mechanics, materials science, and physics with applications ranging from multi-scale material modeling to assessing the reliability and safety of large-scale structures. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University in 2010, after which he was employed as a Research Engineer in applied computational mechanics at Weidlinger Associates, Inc. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2013. For his work in UQ, Prof. Shields has been awarded the ONR Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the DOE Early Career Award, and the Johns Hopkins University Catalyst Award. Prof. Shields and his group also develop the open-source UQpy (Uncertainty Quantification with Python) software, which is a general toolbox and development environment for UQ in computational, mathematical, and physical systems.

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