By Leslie Streeter

Brian Hartman has joined the Advisory Council Tri-Cities (ACT) for Washington State University Tri-Cities at the appointment of WSU President Kirk Schulz.

Hartman is a Bechtel senior vice president and is project director for the DOE Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site. As project director, Hartman is responsible for the 2,500 employees who are commissioning the plant to transform tank waste stored at Hanford into a form safe for long-term disposal.

ACT is comprised of business, civic, and education leaders as well as alumni who have a strategic interest in WSU Tri-Cities. The Council’s primary mission is to foster closer ties between WSU Tri-Cities, its alumni, plus the community, region, and state. Membership on the ATC represents a commitment to improving WSU Tri-Cities ability to positively affect the community through education, scholarship and outreach. The council reviews initiatives of ongoing importance providing strategic and tactical thinking, internal and external advocacy and guidance to hold the campus and system accountable to the local community. 

Hartman is an accomplished engineering and project management professional with over 40 years of designing, constructing, and commissioning major projects for both government and commercial customers. Hartman began his career at Bechtel in 1982 working on nuclear power plant design. He advanced through roles of increasing responsibility for design and construction engineering, serving in every aspect from a technical specialist in distributed control systems, to engineering supervisor, to field engineer, to chief engineer for instrumentation and control, to project engineer, and ultimately project manager. Before joining the Hanford project, he was the global manager of engineering for Bechtel.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also a registered Professional Engineer and a member of the International Society of Automation and the National Society of Black Engineers.