WATT DURDEN
Senior Commissioning Specialist
Watson “Watt” Durden joined JHE in May of 2019 as a Senior Commissioning Specialist. Previously, Watt worked as an Instrument and Control Supervising Engineer, and as a Commissioning Manager, with an international design consulting and construction firm for eleven years.
Watt grew up and went to school in northern Louisiana before moving to the Dallas area for the next 20 years. Since then, he has moved to Austin, St. Paul, Orlando, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Belton, and is currently based in New Orleans.
He began his formal career 46 years ago as an Instrumentation Technician working for Texas Instruments at their Dallas Expressway Site; focusing on the development of an in-house Energy Management/Optimization computer system. In a way, Watt’s “real” career of diagnosing and fixing problems began when he was a motorcycle mechanic while attending Louisiana Tech University. This was also when he realized that he could get paid to do something that he loved to do and have fun doing it. Watt has always worked with instrumentation and controls, primarily in the water and wastewater industries but, also in the processed foods, batch polymers, ultrapure water, and automotive production industries. At the time, he didn’t realize that when he brought all those systems and sub-systems online, proving they all worked together, that he was already performing a major part of Commissioning and Startup.
Watt believes his sense of humor is vital to his ability to overcome challenges, both technical and personal. He knows that a reputation of trust is earned every day and that is easily lost without personal and professional integrity. On the personal challenge side, it is a good thing Watt enjoys travel. Over the course of his career and despite how frequently he has moved, he may have spent more nights in hotels than he has at home! When he does get home, he enjoys being with his family, taking his dog for walks and living in more than one room. Also, after 35 years he has managed to get back to his motorcycle heritage with a 2020 Indian Challenger.