Simon Sequeira, President & CEO, Quadvest

Invest: spoke with Simon Sequeira, president and CEO of water and wastewater services company Quadvest, about its acquisition by H2O America, Houston’s steady housing growth, and the infrastructure realities shaping expansion. Under new ownership, Quadvest is preparing to deploy more capital, accelerate development timelines, and reinforce long-term water security across Greater Houston. “With H2O America acquiring us, we are going to grow even faster. We will be hiring more people, and we will be putting more capital to work in the Houston area,” Sequeira said.

What does the acquisition by H2O America mean for Quadvest’s long-term investment in the region?

H2O America wanted to acquire Quadvest because they are not currently in the Houston market. They see Houston as either the No. 1 or No. 2 fastest-growing market for homebuilding in the United States. They operate in multiple states and cities, but they are not in what they view as one of the best housing markets in the country.

Their acquisition of us is about accelerating growth. They bring a lot of capital to the table that we did not have, and they intend to help us grow even faster than we were growing. That translates into more infrastructure investment and more capacity to support development across the region.

However, they do not want to change a whole lot at Quadvest. They bought us for who we are, and they do not want to break anything. We are a leader in the sector in Houston, and they do not see a reason to come in and change what is working.

As you reflect on this past year and look into 2026, what trends in Houston are shaping how Quadvest operates?

The changes in the utility industry are slow moving. Over longer periods of time, though, there are creative ways for developers, homebuilders, and utilities like ours to provide infrastructure to growing communities in Houston.

We operate in the suburbs and outlying areas. We provide water and sewer to developments, and we are not doing projects in the city of Houston because those areas already have water and sewer. We are working in places that are new, growing, and do not yet have utilities, and those areas just continue to grow. There is absolutely no slowdown. At a minimum, the market is as strong as last year, and last year was good.

Houston is fortunate in some ways. We have a lot of land, and the growth has been steady. I always like to say Houston is a boring housing market, because it is consistent and predictable. We absolutely love it like that. We have not experienced the same boom cycles you might see elsewhere, yet Houston continues to be one of the top homebuilding markets in the United States.

With rising construction costs and broader economic uncertainty, how do you balance system upgrades and new investment while keeping affordability in mind?

That is certainly a challenge. The one thing about Quadvest that is different from pretty much every other utility is that we are vertically integrated. You will not find another utility like us that does all the construction we do. We build our own water plants, we build our own sewer plants, and we do as much work as we can in-house.

We do our own design, engineering, and permitting, too. We are trying to bring as much of the process in-house as we can. That allows us to control construction costs and control timelines. When you are at the mercy of contractors, delays happen and there is not much you can do. By doing more internally, we can mitigate some of that.

Affordability is an issue, and we are not exempt. But controlling costs helps, and those savings can be passed along. It may be a smaller piece of the overall development puzzle, but every little bit matters.

What investments are you making to improve system resilience, especially given Houston’s extreme weather and grid challenges?

Over the last few years, we have installed devices at plants that let us monitor operations remotely and also control them. When we have power outages, we can log into a plant, run through a checklist, and restart pumps and motors remotely instead of sending someone out immediately. We can monitor things on a computer and manage facilities remotely, which helps a lot with customer service and allows us to multiply our workforce.

We have also put in a lot of generators at plants. The power grid is a challenge, and it is getting better, but it is going to take a while for all those improvements to impact us. In the meantime, we want to make sure that if we have long-term power outages, we can power up the facilities and maintain service.

Are you using AI or advanced analytics in operations yet?

We are just starting. It has not made a big impact on the way we operate yet, but it is making people more efficient in day-to-day workflow. We have not started using it to crunch data from water and wastewater plants to make decisions, but that is something on our radar.

How are you approaching workforce and talent challenges in the utility sector?

Employment in our sector has been a problem for a long time. Kids do not graduate from high school or college and say they want to operate a water plant or a sewer plant. It is not a high-visibility career path, so it has been a challenge, and there has been coverage about the aging workforce in the utility sector.

A couple of legislative sessions ago, we got legislation passed that allows us to go into high schools and create a vocational pathway, so students can learn about the trade and earn a Class D water or wastewater license while they are still in high school. It has had some impact, though it is still early and takes time to get adopted broadly.

On the construction side, it is also difficult. Because we do our own construction, we need project managers, and those roles are in high demand across Houston and Texas. Houston is growing, and it is hard to find people who can manage that work at the pace the market requires.

How are regulatory bottlenecks affecting development timelines, and what are you doing to address them?

One of the bottlenecks in development is the discharge permit for wastewater treatment plants, called a TPDES permit. When you build a wastewater treatment plant, engineers do modeling and you apply for the permit. A new subdivision cannot be built without water and wastewater infrastructure.

Historically, those permits took nine to twelve months. Now they are taking over two years. Developers and homebuilders I work with have been inquiring with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality about the holdup, and we are being told some permit categories are being prioritized over residential development, which puts housing-related permits lower in the stack.

We are working on legislation to fix that. The next legislative session is not until 2027, but you do the work in the interim. We want to get timelines back closer to six to nine months so developers can move faster, we can deliver infrastructure faster, and more housing can come online sooner. Time costs developers money, and long delays slow the entire pipeline.

Looking ahead two to three years, where do you see the strongest opportunities for growth for Quadvest?

I see the outlying areas continuing to grow, which has always been the case in Houston. There is also inner-city redevelopment, so it is both. Houston is still less expensive than most major cities, so people continue coming here.

With H2O America acquiring us, we are going to grow even faster. We will be hiring more people, and we will be putting more capital to work in the Houston area.

What should business leaders understand about Houston’s long-term water outlook?

One thing people do not always recognize is water availability. You hear about certain areas where water is a challenge. In the Greater Houston area, there is no water shortage. We have more water than we can ever use.

We are in a water-rich part of the state. When we build a water plant in Houston, you drill a hole in the ground and you hit water consistently. That is not the case everywhere, and we are lucky. It allows the region to grow wherever it wants to grow.