Ted Allen has served as City Engineer for the City of Los Angeles since 2022, leading the Bureau of Engineering (Engineering) which is a part of the Department of Public Works. Ted grew up in nearby Whittier, California, and attended UCLA, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 1992. He obtained his California Civil Engineering license in 1997. Ted has spent his entire career working for the City’s Public Works Department, including three years with the Bureau of Sanitation and the rest with Engineering. Ted spent the first 20 years of his career working on all aspects of project delivery, including design, construction management, project management, financial management and contracting. In 2014, Ted was made Deputy City Engineer over the Development Services Program, which includes the public right-of-way permitting and land development functions within Engineering, as well as the two divisions that oversee technology. This program issues more than 20,000 permits annually and manages numerous web applications. In this role, Ted led Engineering’s transition to the cloud and oversaw several web application improvements or replacements, including a transition to electronic plan check and a cashiering web application to accept electronic checks.Ted also continues to help lead the City’s BuildLA project that implemented a single citywide web application for development services appointments and virtual counter services. He is passionate about the future transformations that BuildLA will provide, including the facilitation of much needed affordable housing in the City. Ted has frequently utilized his affinity for technology to make organizational improvements, and has also implemented a number of data analytics tools within Engineering. Ted serves on the Industry Advisory Board for the UCLA Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and for the Cal State LA Computer Science Department. He is currently working with UCLA on a project to utilize technology to assess the condition of hillside streets within the City and with Cal State LA to develop a sidewalk assessment robot. Ted has also been a key participant in the California Multi-Agency Capital Improvement Project Benchmarking Study group since 2007. As a part of that group, he discusses and analyzes project delivery best practices with executives from six other large California cities. He has leveraged the findings from that study group and his own experiences to help implement several project delivery policies and procedures over the years. Above all, Ted places great value on employee development and an equitable workplace. He spent many years coordinating Engineering’s rotation program for recent hires and actively participates in the mentorship program every year. Ted is an executive member of Engineering’s Racial Equity Committee and was a lead in developing Engineering’s outreach to local elementary and middle schools to encourage students to consider pursuing engineering careers. Ted is also a Senior Certified Professional by the Society for Human Resource Management. |