Professional Summary
Senior Water Resources Engineer with over 26 years of experience bridging advanced hydrological simulation and complex decision support. With more than two decades specializing in GoldSim architecture across consulting and software sectors, I have a proven track record of designing highly complex water balance models and stochastic simulations. Passionate about leveraging dynamic simulation and custom interfaces to solve intricate water resource challenges, including regulatory compliance, under uncertainty.
Technical Skills
Hydrology & Hydraulics
- Industrial Water Balance
- Municipal Water Delivery Systems
- Groundwater–Surface Water Interaction
- Irrigation Canal Improvements
- Flood Control Studies
- Rainfall-Runoff Modeling
Simulation & Strategy
- GoldSim (Advanced)
- EPANET, HEC-RAS, SWMM
- Western Water Rights & Allocation
- Conceptual Water Supply Modeling
- Decision Support Systems
- Stochastic Modeling
Programming & Tools
- Python (Django, Pandas, SciPy)
- Cloud Infrastructure (AWS, Heroku)
- API Development & Integrations
- Web App Architecture & UI/UX
- Git/GitHub Version Control
Professional Experience
April 2026 – Present | Seattle, WA
Principal Engineer & Independent Consultant
Lillywhite Water Solutions LLC
- Providing specialized consulting services in water resources engineering, simulation architecture, and software development.
- Partnering with clients to build custom digital solutions, stochastic models, and decision-support systems.
- Developing modern web applications to provide intuitive interfaces for complex simulation models.
July 2010 – March 2026 | Seattle, WA
Senior Water Resources Engineer & Solution Lead
GoldSim Technology Group
- Served in multifaceted roles spanning software design, testing, advanced technical support, training, and strategic modeling support for enterprise customers.
- Designed core software architecture and features, including the GoldSim Controller and Pool elements, translating physical logic into robust software capabilities.
- Designed and delivered complex water balance and process models for large-scale clients.
- Consulted with engineers at client organizations on the high-level architecture of their models, drawing on deep exposure to a wide variety of large-scale, real-world modeling systems to advise on best practices and sound design.
- Authored extensive technical documentation—including the official GoldSim Modeling Style Guide—and delivered specialized training to engineers worldwide.
Advanced Modeling & Architecture Projects
- Oil Sands Water Reclamation: Architected a complex water reclamation plant model for a major mining company, engineering a special mathematical solver to successfully handle intricate feedback loops and multiple recycle streams.
- Hawkes Bay Regional Water Supply (NZ): Built a custom flow solver to study the viability of a new reservoir in a large agricultural basin, accurately balancing complex, competing multi-sector water demands.
- Saskatchewan River Basin Reservoir Operations (Canada): Developed a multi-reservoir operations model for a river basin in Saskatchewan, Canada, simulating a cascade of reservoirs in series along a river to supply water for irrigation and mining demands. Engineered complex interaction logic between reservoirs to jointly optimize storage levels for maximum water supply reliability and flood control.
- Large-Scale Model Design Advisory: Provided high-level model architecture consultation to enterprise clients across a broad range of water resource and environmental systems—reviewing complex, large-scale models and advising on structural design decisions to ensure models were technically sound, defensible, and built in a way that delivers reliable results for clients.
2001-2003 & 2004-2010 (hiatus at Ensign Eng.) | SLC, UT & Seattle, WA
Regional Technology Leader / Water Resources Engineer
CH2M HILL
- Served as Project Manager for 10+ major water resources projects; managed a $200k fee project that secured an ACEC Honor Award (Utah Chapter, 2006).
- Led technical modeling in reservoir operations, supply-demand forecasting, hydrology, and unsteady open channel flow (HEC-RAS, SWMM, GoldSim).
- Supported large-scale water conveyance infrastructure design projects—including major steel pipelines, concrete canals, large stormwater trunk lines, and river diversion structures—by providing the hydraulic and hydrologic modeling that drove and validated design decisions.
- Spearheaded internal business development initiatives focused on simulation tools, acting as a Solution Lead and directly resulting in new project acquisitions and revenue growth.
Key Consulting Projects
- Digital Twins: Developed a custom hydraulic digital twin for the Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake to simulate real-time operations of new WTPs, pump stations, and pipelines prior to startup.
- Jordan River Regional Water Balance: Developed a comprehensive model of the Salt Lake Valley water cycle, simulating complex decision logic for routing water across municipalities and irrigation districts from supply through effluent recycling—encompassing trans-basin imports, agricultural canal deliveries, municipal demands, and WWTP return flows to the Great Salt Lake.
- Industrial Water Balance: Designed major model upgrades for a site-wide water balance model for Kennecott Copper Mine (Rio Tinto), expanding the tailings facility simulation to drive operational decision-making.
- Reclaimed Water Networks: Engineered a complex operations model for the City of Santa Rosa, simulating scenarios across a 12-pond system managing reclaimed water discharge to avoid exceeding the Russian River's temperature thresholds and regulatory limits.
- Environmental Constraints: Built a dynamic operations model for CalWater to evaluate fish bypass scenarios for river diversions, incorporating complex water rights and environmental constraints.
- Uinta River Water Supply Study (Utah — Regional Scale): Developed a regional-scale water rights and diversion model along the Uintah and White Rocks rivers, quantifying available supply by simulating streamflow routing, priority-based allocations across competing diversions, and supply yield estimates under varying hydrologic conditions.
May 2000 – March 2004
Early Engineering Career
- Water Resources Engineer | Ensign Engineering (2003-2004): Managed design and construction documents for water, wastewater, and irrigation distribution systems, including authoring a successful USBR 2025 grant proposal.
- Junior Engineer | SHN Consulting Engineers (2000-2001): Assisted with stream channel restoration, dam break analysis, and Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans (SWPPP).
Education
Master of Science, Civil & Environmental Engineering
University of Utah | 2008
Thesis: "Performance of Water Supply Operations Measured by Reliability and Marginal Cost"
Bachelor of Science, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Brigham Young University | 2000
Licensure & Affiliations
State of Utah, P.E. (2004)
State of California, P.E. (2003)
Member, ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers)
Software Development
Co-Simulation Architecture (Python/GoldSim/EPA)
Architected integration bridges connecting GoldSim with modeling engines like EPANET and EPA SWMM. Built demonstrative linkages to MODFLOW to illustrate potential multi-domain co-simulation for complex water systems.
PrecipGen (Python/GoldSim)
Engineered a parameter generator and advanced stochastic model expanding upon the traditional WGEN methodology for simulating synthetic daily precipitation patterns, significantly enhancing climate variability analysis.
GSPy (Open Source)
Developed the GoldSim-Python interface library, facilitating seamless integration between dynamic simulation software and the Python data science stack.
rTemp (Python)
Developed a deterministic water temperature model utilizing a heat budget approach to calculate water body response temperatures based on complex meteorological inputs.
Publications & Presentations
- Lillywhite, J. (2025). "Introduction to PrecipGen: Stochastic Daily Precipitation Model – Enhancing Mine Water Management under Climate Variability." Presented at Mine Water Solutions Conference.
- Ahmadisharaf, E., Kalyanapu, A., Lillywhite, J., & Tonn, G.L. (2018). "A probabilistic framework to evaluate the uncertainty of design hydrograph: case study of Swannanoa River Watershed." Hydrological Sciences Journal, 63(12).
- Lillywhite, J. et al. (2016). "Vulnerability Assessment to Support Integrated Water Resources Management of Metropolitan Water Supply Systems." Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management.
- Lillywhite, J. (2014). "Probabilistic analysis to evaluate the effects of dam breach methodologies on downstream flood hazard." World Environmental & Water Resources Congress.