In an interview with Donald Gibson, partner at Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate, he talked about what he's learned from leading some of the most complex development projects in the country, and why for him, it always comes back to the people.

Q: What part of your work do you enjoy the most?

Donald: We're living in a time where there's a crisis of meaning in a lot of people's work. So many people go through their careers and never feel like what they're doing actually matters. What I love about this work is that you can take an organization that's frustrated and stuck in a bad building and create an environment that unlocks their potential and transforms their lives. Behind every project is an institution trying to reach the next level, a university working to transform itself, a court system built to serve the growing needs of the community, an agency finally giving its people a facility worthy of the work they do. When people feel they're part of something that matters, everything changes.

Q: How do you think about your role on a complex project?

Donald: At the end of the day, you're kind of a glorified bus driver. You get everybody on the bus, figure out what seat they need to be in, make sure their baggage is on the bus too, and then you drive everybody from A to B and get them to their destination.

That sounds simple, but the reality is that every project puts a different group of people together with different personalities, communication styles, institutional cultures, and levels of authority. Some need more structure. Some need autonomy. Some have critical insights but won't share them unless the conditions are right. The work of putting people in the right seat is really the work of understanding what each person and each group needs in order to be productive, and then building the process around that understanding.

Q: Walk us through your approach. How do you set a project up for success?

Donald: It starts with making sure everyone agrees on where they're going. On a project with 17 Pentagon agencies at the table, or a university where the president, the provost, the CFO, and the facilities team each believe they're building something slightly different, you can have a process that looks perfectly organized on the surface while the substance is quietly drifting apart. True alignment has to happen before the work begins, and not just on the technical side. Everyone involved needs to share the same understanding of what success actually looks like for the institution and the community it serves.

From there, it's about assembling the right group and creating an environment where great work can actually happen. I don't look for leaders for each work stream. I look for champions. People who will enthusiastically own a piece of the project and make sure it gets the attention it needs. When people feel genuine ownership over something that matters, they raise the bar on their own. They'll redo work without being asked because they know it can be better.

The other piece that most people overlook is psychological safety. The best ideas rarely come from the loudest voice in the room. They come from environments where people feel safe to contribute, where there's no pride of authorship. If the janitor has the best idea, we're running with it. I'm always watching for silent disagreement, because the person who's not speaking up often has the most important insight. Not everyone is comfortable challenging a consensus in a room full of people, so I'll reach out one on one afterward. You have to get past a lot of ideas before you find the right one, and you can't get there if people are afraid to speak.

And then it's about maintaining alignment throughout, not just at the beginning. These projects rarely follow a straight path. Conditions change, priorities shift, challenges emerge. The work is about navigating through that reality without losing direction or momentum, keeping teams coordinated, keeping decisions moving forward, and following through on every commitment made along the way.

Q: You talk a lot about rapport and trust. How do you build that on a project with so many stakeholders?

Donald: On the largest projects I've led, we physically brought stakeholders together in rented conference spaces, sometimes weekly, sometimes biweekly, for structured working sessions with the design team. And we served lunch. That sounds almost trivially simple, but it's not. Breaking bread together builds rapport. Rapport builds trust. Trust changes how people communicate. And communication is the infrastructure that everything else depends on.

My approach is rooted in what I'd call servant leadership, the idea that the most effective way to lead a complex project is to focus on making everyone around you successful. When the team is successful, the project is successful. In practice, that means structuring the process around the people involved, understanding who needs support, who can operate with autonomy, and who can champion different pieces of the work.

There's also a principle from behavioral economics that I've seen play out over and over: when you go out of your way to help someone, they're more likely to step up when you need help later. When that mindset becomes infectious across an entire team, the results speak for themselves.

Q: Tell us about your background. How did your career path lead you here?

Donald: I studied architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, then spent years in construction management at Turner, and then moved into real estate development at JPI, and eventually found my way to Edgemoor, where I've spent the last 15 years focused on complex public development. That's not a typical path. Most people stay in one lane. But having worked as an architect, a builder, and a developer across both private and public sectors means I can think about a problem from multiple angles and shift between those perspectives depending on what the project needs.

That range is what allowed me to sit in a room with 200 stakeholders from 17 different Pentagon agencies and find a way to get them all moving in the same direction. 

Before joining Edgemoor, I led the design and planning effort on three of the ten largest buildings in the Mid-Atlantic region, including the 1.75 million square foot BRAC 133 complex in Alexandria and the 1.2 million square foot Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC. Combined, nearly four million square feet of some of the most complex federal development work ever undertaken in the region. That experience shaped everything about how I approach projects today.

Q: What does success look like to you when a project is complete?

Donald: The real test begins after delivery. Anyone can get a building built. The question is whether it actually works for the people who use it every day, for years and decades after the project team has moved on.

I've worked across enough of the industry to see the alternative up close. A lot of commercial development is driven by short-term thinking. Build it, lease it, sell it. The building looks good on day one, but nobody in that structure is asking how it will hold up in fifteen or twenty years. The projects I'm drawn to are different. They're meant to last fifty years, a hundred years, and that changes how you approach everything.

What I'm most proud of is that the buildings we've delivered continue to perform well beyond what was originally expected, serving the people and institutions they were built for long after the ribbon cutting. And I think that comes back to something I mentioned earlier. When people feel they're part of something that matters, the work reflects it. The teams push harder, the decisions get sharper, and the result is a project that doesn't just get delivered, but endures. That's what drives us.

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Donald Gibson is a partner at Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate, where he leads complex civic and institutional development projects. His background spans architecture, construction management, and real estate development, including leading the design and planning effort on three of the ten largest buildings in the Mid-Atlantic region before joining Edgemoor.