Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood, the Montgomery, Ala.-based architecture and engineering outfit, strengthened its position in Georgia by completing its acquisition of Smyrna, Ga.-based Stevenson & Palmer Engineering, which has been in business in the Peach State for more than 50 years.
The two firms have been collaborators for at least the past two years, and currently have several projects underway. Teams from both companies have been working on an integration strategy to ensure a smooth transition.
Stevenson & Palmer’s 22 employees will continue to provide engineering support services from their company’s four Georgia offices, albeit under the name Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood, which already had an office in Atlanta. “The SPE team is still in place—we’ve just added a few names and a new list of services to our resume,” said Corkey Welch, Stevenson & Palmer’s former President, who is staying on as a Senior Client Manager for the combined firm. That team now reports to Jim Teel, Goodwyn, Mills’ Vice President of Georgia.
Founded in 1947, Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood employs more than 300 people who work out of its dozen offices in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina. The company assembled its Georgia team in 2011. Steve Cawood, President of the firm’s Eastern Region, which encompasses its operations in Georgia and South Carolina, spearheaded the negotiations between the two companies, which began two years ago, says Abby Basinger, a GMC spokesperson.
Its services include environmental, geotechnical, interior design, landscape, planning, surveying, and transportation. This month, GMC started construction on a 140,000-sf, $55 million football complex at Clemson University that is scheduled to open in early 2017. The firm is also in the planning stages of a $29 million expansion and upgrade of Franklin High School in Williamson County, Tenn., which if greenlighted would include more classrooms, a new athletic facility, and multipurpose field and track.
Basinger says GMC, which does work nationally, has no immediate plans to open new offices. But she also points out that GMC has customers in Mississippi and North Carolina, “so you never know.”
Related Stories
| Nov 3, 2010
Dining center cooks up LEED Platinum rating
Students at Bowling Green State University in Ohio will be eating in a new LEED Platinum multiuse dining center next fall. The 30,000-sf McDonald Dining Center will have a 700-seat main dining room, a quick-service restaurant, retail space, and multiple areas for students to gather inside and out, including a fire pit and several patios—one of them on the rooftop.
| Nov 2, 2010
11 Tips for Breathing New Life into Old Office Spaces
A slowdown in new construction has firms focusing on office reconstruction and interior renovations. Three experts from Hixson Architecture Engineering Interiors offer 11 tips for office renovation success. Tip #1: Check the landscaping.
| Nov 2, 2010
Cypress Siding Helps Nature Center Look its Part
The Trinity River Audubon Center, which sits within a 6,000-acre forest just outside Dallas, utilizes sustainable materials that help the $12.5 million nature center fit its wooded setting and put it on a path to earning LEED Gold.
| Nov 2, 2010
A Look Back at the Navy’s First LEED Gold
Building Design+Construction takes a retrospective tour of a pace-setting LEED project.
| Nov 2, 2010
Wind Power, Windy City-style
Building-integrated wind turbines lend a futuristic look to a parking structure in Chicago’s trendy River North neighborhood. Only time will tell how much power the wind devices will generate.
| Nov 2, 2010
Energy Analysis No Longer a Luxury
Back in the halcyon days of 2006, energy analysis of building design and performance was a luxury. Sure, many forward-thinking AEC firms ran their designs through services such as Autodesk’s Green Building Studio and IES’s Virtual Environment, and some facility managers used Honeywell’s Energy Manager and other monitoring software. Today, however, knowing exactly how much energy your building will produce and use is survival of the fittest as energy costs and green design requirements demand precision.
| Nov 2, 2010
Yudelson: ‘If It Doesn’t Perform, It Can’t Be Green’
Jerry Yudelson, prolific author and veteran green building expert, challenges Building Teams to think big when it comes to controlling energy use and reducing carbon emissions in buildings.
| Nov 2, 2010
Historic changes to commercial building energy codes drive energy efficiency, emissions reductions
Revisions to the commercial section of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) represent the largest single-step efficiency increase in the history of the national, model energy. The changes mean that new and renovated buildings constructed in jurisdictions that follow the 2012 IECC will use 30% less energy than those built to current standards.
| Nov 1, 2010
Sustainable, mixed-income housing to revitalize community
The $41 million Arlington Grove mixed-use development in St. Louis is viewed as a major step in revitalizing the community. Developed by McCormack Baron Salazar with KAI Design & Build (architect, MEP, GC), the project will add 112 new and renovated mixed-income rental units (market rate, low-income, and public housing) totaling 162,000 sf, plus 5,000 sf of commercial/retail space.
| Nov 1, 2010
John Pearce: First thing I tell designers: Do your homework!
John Pearce, FAIA, University Architect at Duke University, Durham, N.C., tells BD+C’s Robert Cassidy about the school’s construction plans and sustainability efforts, how to land work at Duke, and why he’s proceeding with caution when it comes to BIM.
