Firms on the move – March 2009

Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Huber, Inc. (FTC&H) and Wetland and Coastal Resources (WCR) merged in January. WCR principals and staff joined FTC&H in their Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Farmington Hills, Mich., offices. FTC&H is a professional engineering, environmental, architectural, and construction management firm; WCR is an environmental consulting firm specializing in ecological services.

Golder Associates, Inc., acquired the coastal engineering group and associated assets of Pacific International Engineering. Operating out of Golder’s 150-employee Redmond, Wash., office, the team of engineers provides services pertaining to coasts, coastal inlets, estuaries, and river deltas including navigation and dredging, wake analysis, ocean energy, beach protection and restoration, geomorphology, oceanographic data collection, and wave, tidal, and sediment modeling. Golder also expanded its team in the Great Lakes region by adding offices in Green Bay, Wis., and Woodridge, Ill., staffed by consultants who specialize in services for the waste management, mining, and transportation industries.

H2M, a multi-disciplined engineering, architectural, planning, and environmental service firm with offices in New York and New Jersey, established a Wastewater Engineering Division within the company because of the sector’s growth during the last 10 years. With the new division and its specialty departments, H2M expects to broaden its ability to keep abreast of emerging technologies and issues.

SCS Engineers hired four new technical professionals at its Portland, Ore., office, expanding its local solid waste engineering and consulting services to include environmental compliance monitoring and reporting, hydrogeology, stormwater, due diligence, and traditional environmental services. The professionals are Louis Caruso, David Lamadrid, Jason Davendonis, and Jeremy Jones.

Smith Seckman Reid, Inc. (SSR), an engineering design and facility consulting firm with 13 offices across the country, moved its Denver office to the Denver Tech Center. The new office features more than 20,000 square feet of office space—two-times larger than its previous office—an open floor plan and collaborative work space; a mixed-use café, recreation, and meeting area; and an updated conference space that incorporates new technologies. SSR also incorporated several sustainable features including occupancy sensors and 100-percent daylighting that provides each member of SSR’s 40-person staff a view of the outdoors.

Langan Engineering & Environmental Services, a land development engineering and environmental consulting firm, announced that Langan International, its wholly owned subsidiary, opened two new offices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE): Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Stantec completed the acquisition of Jacques Whitford, an environmental consulting services firm with more than 1,700 employees and 40 offices principally in Canada. Jacques Whitford was 100-percent employee owned. According to Stantec, the transaction received 98-percent approval from Jacques Whitford’s shareholders.

R.A. Smith National, Brookfield, Wis., added a Water Resources Group to expand the firm’s surface water capabilities for the public and private sectors. Gary Raasch and Cynthia DeBruine, formerly of Hey & Associates, Brookfield, Wis., joined the newly established Water Resources Group.

GZA GeoEnvironmental Inc., an environmental and geotechnical consulting firm, announced that Newmarket, N.H.-based NHSC, Inc., joined the GZA Team. NHSC brings experienced professional scientists with skills in land resource management, wetland and soil inventory, water resource management, subsurface sewage disposal, and environmental site assessments.

JGI Eastern, Inc. (JGI) and Zipper Zeman Associates (ZZA) officially changed their names to Terracon Consultants, Inc., after operating as wholly owned Terracon subsidiaries for two and three years, respectively. JGI is a multi-disciplinary consulting firm with headquarters in Manchester, N.H., and offices in Hartford, Conn., and Portland, Maine. ZZA provides geotechnical, environmental, and construction materials services in the Northwest, with offices in Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma, Wash.

Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc., opened a Midwest office in Oakbrook Terrace, a suburb of Chicago. The Midwest office will focus on water-related projects in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Warren Green, P.E., will serve as the director of the new office.

Woolpert, Inc., acquired Miller Einhouse Rymer & Boyd, a landscape architecture, civil engineering, and planning firm in Orlando, Fla. This is Woolpert’s third Florida acquisition in the past year. It also acquired TEK Science of Orlando, Fla., which specializes in stormwater retrofit design, NPDES compliance, stormwater drainage design, stormwater modeling, and utility design; and Rockett & Associates, Winter Park, Fla., which specializes in water distribution and sewer collection.