A Conversation with Derrick Hiebert: Building Resilience Beyond the Federal Government

Disaster resilience depends on more than identifying risks and investing in mitigation. Communities also need to coordinate funding, expertise, and people across organizations that often operate independently. As resources tighten and the future of federal support becomes less certain, that coordination is becoming increasingly important.

At the 2026 Forerunner Summit, Derrick Hiebert joined Forerunner CEO JT White to discuss how communities can continue reducing disaster risk amid these challenges. Hiebert brings experience from nearly every level of government. Before joining AECOM to lead its infrastructure resilience practice, he served as FEMA’s Assistant Administrator for Hazard Mitigation, overseeing a $35 billion grant portfolio and the agency’s floodplain management program.

Despite the challenges facing the field, Hiebert offered an optimistic perspective: disaster risk can be reduced through sound engineering, thoughtful planning, and community engagement. The question is how to deliver that work effectively when responsibilities are spread across institutions, administrative demands are growing, and communities have limited capacity.

The challenge is connecting the work already underway

For Hiebert, one of the biggest obstacles to resilience is not a shortage of programs or expertise. It is the difficulty of bringing them together. Federal agencies administer separate funding programs, while local departments responsible for planning, permitting, transportation, and hazard mitigation often pursue their work independently. Even when organizations share the same goals, their structures and processes can make coordinated action difficult.

Boston's Green Ribbon Commission illustrates the scale of the challenge. Working with city leaders and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the private-sector organization is supporting a coastal storm risk management effort spanning 47 miles of coastline. The initiative could involve up to 100 projects costing between $4 billion and $10 billion, with a goal of completing half the work by 2040.

Delivering that vision requires more than engineering solutions. Projects must move forward across numerous properties, landowners, and decision-makers, each with their own responsibilities and priorities. Without a way to coordinate those interests, even well-funded initiatives can struggle to translate plans into progress.

Hiebert's point was that communities do not necessarily need another program to solve these problems. They need ways to connect existing programs, institutions, and resources around shared outcomes.

Turn shared priorities into coordinated action

That coordination cannot depend solely on informal relationships between people who happen to know one another. Hiebert emphasized the importance of bringing organizations together around common goals, with clear responsibilities for moving the work forward.

Large initiatives, including the planning and delivery of the Olympics, demonstrate how government agencies and private-sector partners can align their efforts around a shared objective. When responsibilities are defined and partners understand how their work contributes to the broader goal, complex projects become easier to coordinate.

The same principle applies to disaster resilience, although local governments face a different set of constraints. A smaller community may need to coordinate planning decisions, infrastructure investments, building requirements, and hazard mitigation efforts without having dedicated staff to manage every relationship. When each department operates independently, important connections can be missed, delaying projects or leaving gaps in risk reduction.

For Hiebert, building these connections is part of the work itself. Resilience depends not only on what individual agencies accomplish, but also on whether their efforts reinforce one another.

Prepare for a more distributed model of resilience

Coordination becomes even more important as communities consider how to sustain essential resilience functions amid uncertainty about federal support.

During the conversation, Hiebert addressed the future of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the Community Rating System (CRS), and federal programs that support flood mapping and technical assistance. Changes to these programs could affect how communities access expertise, maintain capacity, and support residents in understanding and managing flood risk.

Hiebert encouraged communities to prepare for a more federated model of resilience, in which states and local governments play a greater role in sustaining functions such as training, technical assistance, capacity building, and public education.

That does not mean local governments should be expected to replace every federal responsibility. Instead, communities can identify the capabilities they depend on, strengthen local and state partnerships, and determine how essential services could continue as federal priorities and funding evolve.

Federal funding is only one part of the broader investment that states and communities make in reducing risk. By building relationships and strengthening local capacity before disruptions occur, communities can be better positioned to sustain progress when the support available to them changes.

Make limited resources go further through collaboration

For local governments already working with limited staff and budgets, taking on additional responsibilities can seem daunting. Hiebert acknowledged that better coordination cannot fully compensate for lost funding, but it can help communities get more value from the resources and expertise they already have.

His experience in Washington State offered one example: He helped bring together climate action teams, building officials, utilities, conservation districts, and county agencies to develop a shared wildfire strategy. Rather than leaving each organization to address wildfire risk within its own area of responsibility, the initiative created an opportunity to align efforts across the broader community.

Florida provided another example of why that approach matters. Following Hurricane Ian, FEMA launched a major floodplain management compliance action involving several communities. When Hurricanes Helene and Milton followed, Hiebert observed a more proactive, coordinated response from affected communities, including Pinellas County.

Together, these examples illustrate how coordination can help communities move beyond isolated efforts. When agencies share information, align their priorities, and understand how their responsibilities fit together, they are better equipped to respond to changing conditions and navigate complex recovery processes.

Build resilience that lasts

Hiebert closed by returning to the purpose behind this work. The value of resilience extends beyond the cost-benefit calculations used to justify investments. It is also about helping people protect their lives and livelihoods, recover from disasters, and maintain their connections to their communities.

Technology can support that effort by making information more accessible and helping organizations coordinate their work, but tools alone cannot resolve institutional silos or establish shared priorities.

Those changes require leadership, sustained partnerships, and a commitment to working across organizational boundaries. As communities prepare for evolving disaster risks and uncertainty around federal support, Hiebert's message was clear: lasting resilience depends on making the most of the resources available and ensuring that the organizations responsible for reducing risk are working toward the same outcomes.

Watch the Q&A session: