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Vancouver engineering head retires

March 12th, 2010 · 11 Comments

I’ve been hearing about Tom Timm’s impending retirement for a year, one of the names that kept popping up on the list of “people most likely to get fed up and quit after Vision and Penny Ballem took over.” Then I also heard that he’d been saying even before that he was only going to stick around til the Olympics were over.

My crack investigative team is at work on other things right now, so I won’t get to the bottom of this immediately. But in the meantime, here’s the notice going out to city hall today about his retirement. And I’d like to note what a pleasure Tom was to deal with — always available, always calm, always giving you as much information as he possible could. Even union types appreciated his level-headedness and even-handedness during the six-month strike.

It sounds like city hall is going to do an international search for a replacement. It will be interesting to see who gets the job. Former head engineer Dave Rudberg did a great job of recruiting and promoting strong people in engineering and so there are several good internal candidates.

From: Ballem, Penny
To: [Deleted]
Sent: Fri Mar 12 15:06:08 2010
Subject: retirement
Having honored his commitment to guide Engineering through the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Tom Timm, our much beloved City  Engineer, will be retiring at the end of March 2010.
Tom has been with the City since 1978. He has served in many roles over the years – mostly in engineering where he became an assistant city engineer in 1988, the deputy city engineer about 10 years later in 1999 and finally the city engineer and general manager of engineering in 2004. Some of you might have forgotten that he also served as the city building inspector for 2 years in the late 1990’s. Tom has led numerous initiatives throughout his many years of service, and he leaves a number of important legacies behind, including many successes during the  2010 Games. We will all miss Tom’s leadership, his wry sense of humour and his passion for the great Canadian Game.
The City will be undertaking a broad search process for Tom’s replacement. I have asked Peter Judd, Deputy City Engineer, to assume responsibility for Engineering during this process. I know you will all join me in wishing Tom the very best in his retirement. As is the custom in Engineering, there will be a raucous celebration of his departure at a time and place to be decided!
Penny Ballem

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