Toronto’s Rick Huijbregts joins Stantec as global smart cities lead
March 3, 2022
By CCE
He has held both corporate and academic roles.
Photo courtesy Stantec.
Stantec has hired Toronto-based Rick Huijbregts to lead its global smart cities initiative, which seeks to digitally transform the built environment.
Huijbregts worked for Cisco for nearly 12 years, focusing on ‘smart’ connected communities, the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and digital transformation. During this time, he became a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and an executive-in-residence at Toronto’s George Brown College (GBC).
After he left Cisco, Huijbregts founded Oranje Innovations, a Toronto-based digital transformation advisory practice, becoming its CEO. He also served as senior scholar and vice-president (VP) of strategy and innovation for GBC, industry fellow with Intelligent Buildings and smart cities executive-in-residence for Ryerson University’s venture zone in Brampton, Ont.
In his new role at Stantec’s Toronto office, he is tasked with growing, scaling up and accelerating the firm’s smart city services by bringing together innovative practitioners across multiple disciplines, including buildings, power, water, community development and transportation. He will lead a team of advisors working with real estate developers, designers, engineers, information technology (IT) professionals and project managers.
“Smart cities use digital solutions to overcome complicated challenges in urban environments,” says Nancy MacDonald, Stantec’s VP of urban places. “Rick has extensive experience that will help elevate the work our team does, but he also sees the bigger picture—that we are not using technology for its own sake, but to solve problems and improve people’s lives.”
“Digital technology is ready to create new opportunities and experiences by bringing together people, processes, places, data, connected things and infrastructure,” says Huijbregts. “Stantec is particularly well-suited to lead this movement.”
