Engineering firms and engineering/architecture firms—those that earn more than 50% of their revenues from engineering—have their sights set on foreign shores. Many are jumping headfirst into international waters.
“Instead of overseeing projects from New York, our firm has established offices in Mumbai, Moscow, and other cities outside North America, aiming to overcome the challenge of navigating the local landscape or hiring practices, tax law, and business practices,” says Thomas Z. Scarangello, PE, CEO and Chairman of EA Giant Thornton Tomasetti.
Other firms are just dipping their toes into foreign waters, still looking for international business but choosing not to establish additional offices. Brad Harmsen, AIA, Chairman/CEO of BRPH, says that although his firm is actively working in locales across the globe, they’re partnering with domestic firms to do so, partly because of “the learning curve that comes when working with different currencies and legalities.”
SCROLL DOWN FOR GIANTS 300 ENGINEERING & ENGINEERING/ARCHITECTURE FIRM RANKINGS
Shanghai and Dubai are hot spots for E and EA Giants these days. Glumac, Magnusson Klemencic Associates, and Syska Hennessy Group have opened or expanded their offices in Shanghai. KJWW and Syska Hennessy opened new offices in Dubai. Thornton Tomasetti bucked the trend and opened offices in Beijing and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, while Arup Americas opened new offices in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, just in time for soccer’s World Cup in 2014.
Establishing an office abroad is one thing; getting the business is something entirely different. Referring specifically to the Middle East, Paul VanDuyne, PE, president of KJWW, says, “It takes approximately two years to develop the appropriate relationships, name recognition, and reputation to be successful in obtaining projects in this region.”
Despite the difficulties, an increasingly large share of engineering Giants’ yearly revenue is coming from international projects. Magnusson Klemencic President Ron Klemencic, PE, SE, says that 20-30% of MKA’s gross revenue comes from international business, while KJWW anticipates that 10% of its 2013 revenue will come from international projects. Syska Hennessy Group’s goal is to beef up its international activity by 25% over the next five years.
KEY ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY
Beyond establishing an international presence, technology is also a crucial differentiator for E and EA Giants firms.
Syska Hennessy Group’s new Information and Communications Technology group is offering an expanded scope of services for organizations looking to upgrade their IT platforms with the latest technologies. “Our new offerings include tools and expertise to apply virtualization of existing client environments, data center relocation management, disaster recovery and IT security services, and network and Internet/intranet design and implementation,” said Co-CEO/Co-president Cyrus J. Izzo, PE.
Thornton Tomasetti launched a new Building Sustainability practice in January and now offers LEED consulting and administration, energy and daylight modeling, and sustainable business strategies. The firm also has an advanced computational modeling team; it leverages new technologies by developing custom digital tools that utilize generative and parametric modeling, which enables its engineers to collaborate more effectively with architects in the early phases of design.
HELPING CLIENTS FIND THE MONEY FOR PROJECTS
New financing solutions are also playing a part in E/EA Giants’ business strategies. With the U.S. construction market still in recovery, alternative financing methods are being sought out to help clients put together the dollars they need to complete projects.
At Syska Hennessy Group, public-private partnerships are on the radar. “We are observing an increase in P3 projects across geographies and market sectors,” said Syska Hennessy Group’s Izzo. “The first building being delivered as a true P3 is the Long Beach courthouse in California, which will top out this summer.”
Others are bringing on experts to find the money. Graef hired an economic development specialist, Ronald Van Straten, who has more than 25 years’ experience in helping mostly municipal clients seek grants, low-cost loans, and other funding streams for their capital projects, including tax increment financing.
HEAVY CONCENTRATION AT THE TOP 10 FIRMS
As is true of most of the categories in our Giants 300 rankings, there is a great deal of concentration at the highest level in the E and EA markets. The top 10 engineering firms generated 47% of total revenue for the category, while the top 10 engineering/architecture Giants generated a hefty 85% of the dollars in their group. +
ENGINEERING FIRMS
| Rank | Company | 2011 Total Revenue ($) |
| 1 | Fluor Corp. | 220,674,900 |
| 2 | Arup | 140,324,134 |
| 3 | WSP USA | 98,900,000 |
| 4 | Syska Hennessy Group | 98,744,701 |
| 5 | Affiliated Engineers | 92,815,000 |
| 6 | KPFF Consulting Engineers | 89,000,000 |
| 7 | Henderson Engineers | 61,266,000 |
| 8 | AKF Group | 58,100,000 |
| 9 | TTG/TMAD Taylor & Gaines | 56,820,300 |
| 10 | Smith Seckman Reid | 53,497,000 |
| 11 | R.G. Vanderweil Engineers | 49,823,500 |
| 12 | KJWW Engineering Consultants | 43,784,892 |
| 13 | Bard, Rao + Athanas Consulting Engineers | 40,100,000 |
| 14 | Coffman Engineers | 37,200,000 |
| 15 | TLC Engineering for Architecture | 36,387,033 |
| 16 | Degenkolb Engineers | 35,398,917 |
| 17 | Sebesta Blomberg | 35,120,000 |
| 18 | ESD/Environmental Systems Design | 34,465,000 |
| 19 | Rolf Jensen & Associates | 34,300,000 |
| 20 | Walter P Moore | 34,231,775 |
| 21 | RMF Engineering | 34,005,000 |
| 22 | Glumac | 33,010,927 |
| 23 | Magnusson Klemencic Associates | 32,306,973 |
| 24 | RDK Engineers | 30,882,000 |
| 25 | Mazzetti Nash Lipsey Burch | 28,836,967 |
| 26 | Aon Fire Protection Engineering | 28,200,000 |
| 27 | Birdsall Services Group | 27,500,000 |
| 28 | Interface Engineering | 25,938,485 |
| 29 | M/E Engineering | 25,915,000 |
| 30 | ccrd partners | 24,100,000 |
| 31 | H.F. Lenz Co. | 22,799,000 |
| 32 | Heapy Engineering | 21,402,816 |
| 33 | Sparling | 20,589,847 |
| 34 | ThermalTech Engineering | 19,890,000 |
| 35 | KCI Technologies | 19,761,000 |
| 36 | Newcomb & Boyd | 18,454,021 |
| 37 | Henneman Engineering | 18,000,000 |
| 38 | Bridgers & Paxton Consulting Eng. | 17,650,492 |
| 39 | GHT Limited | 17,363,705 |
| 40 | Eaton Energy Solutions | 16,694,769 |
| 41 | Rutherford & Chekene | 16,538,000 |
| 42 | Dunham Associates | 15,500,000 |
| 43 | Joseph R. Loring & Associates | 15,000,000 |
| 44 | Wallace Engineering | 13,780,000 |
| 45 | James Posey Associates | 13,500,000 |
| 46 | KLH Engineers | 12,559,382 |
| 47 | Lilker Associates Consulting Engineers | 12,500,000 |
| 48 | Karpinski Engineering | 12,343,996 |
| 49 | P2S Engineering | 11,896,229 |
| 50 | RMH Group, The | 11,864,683 |
| 51 | Peter Basso Associates | 10,400,000 |
| 52 | Rist-Frost-Shumway Engineering | 10,039,000 |
| 53 | French & Parrello Associates | 9,782,762 |
| 54 | Bala Consulting Engineers | 9,360,000 |
| 55 | Allen & Shariff | 8,610,036 |
| 56 | Wick Fisher White | 7,821,928 |
| 57 | Brinjac Engineering | 7,342,166 |
| 58 | CTLGroup | 6,030,000 |
| 59 | O’Dea, Lynch, Abbattista Consulting Engineers | 5,900,000 |
| 60 | FBA Engineering | 4,000,000 |
| 61 | Kamm Consulting | 3,681,775 |
| 62 | Apogee Consulting Group | 2,485,000 |
| 63 | G&W Engineering | 2,058,000 |
ENGINEERING/ARCHITECTURE FIRMS
| Rank | Company | 2011 Total Revenue ($) |
| 1 | Jacobs | 2,699,100,000 |
| 2 | AECOM Technology Corp. | 1,487,000,000 |
| 3 | M+W U.S. | 1,015,199,252 |
| 4 | Stantec | 463,300,000 |
| 5 | Parsons Brinckerhoff | 311,300,000 |
| 6 | URS Corp. | 294,100,000 |
| 7 | exp | 205,000,000 |
| 8 | Science Applications International Corp. | 185,390,000 |
| 9 | Merrick & Co. | 111,000,000 |
| 10 | Day & Zimmermann | 109,909,604 |
| 11 | SSOE Group | 107,819,740 |
| 12 | STV | 104,876,000 |
| 13 | Thornton Tomasetti | 98,017,214 |
| 14 | Burns & McDonnell | 94,711,826 |
| 15 | Dewberry | 89,282,766 |
| 16 | Michael Baker Jr., Inc. | 80,730,000 |
| 17 | Middough | 75,750,000 |
| 18 | Clark Nexsen | 68,424,208 |
| 19 | Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates | 64,080,000 |
| 20 | Simpson Gumpertz & Heger | 59,170,000 |
| 21 | AKF Group | 58,100,000 |
| 22 | H&A Architects & Engineers | 39,064,020 |
| 23 | Walker Parking Consultants | 34,422,898 |
| 24 | BRPH | 31,500,000 |
| 25 | Bergmann Associates | 30,700,000 |
| 26 | Shive-Hattery | 28,192,943 |
| 27 | Atkins North America | 23,620,537 |
| 28 | Ross & Baruzzini | 20,377,769 |
| 29 | Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon | 20,100,000 |
| 30 | Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor | 18,300,000 |
| 31 | Guernsey | 18,293,701 |
| 32 | L.R. Kimball | 17,759,000 |
| 33 | GRAEF-USA | 16,770,180 |
| 34 | Zak Companies | 12,335,494 |
| 35 | CJL Engineering | 12,228,000 |
| 36 | Stanley Consultants | 10,892,000 |
| 37 | Spectrum Engineers | 8,828,890 |
| 38 | GRW | 6,290,216 |
| 39 | Davis, Bowen & Friedel | 4,680,714 |
| 40 | Vintage Archonics | 1,972,220 |
Related Stories
| Oct 13, 2010
County building aims for the sun, shade
The 187,032-sf East County Hall of Justice in Dublin, Calif., will be oriented to take advantage of daylighting, with exterior sunshades preventing unwanted heat gain and glare. The building is targeting LEED Silver. Strong horizontal massing helps both buildings better match their low-rise and residential neighbors.
| Oct 12, 2010
Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.
| Oct 12, 2010
Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.
| Oct 12, 2010
Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.
| Oct 12, 2010
University of Toledo, Memorial Field House
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.
| Oct 12, 2010
Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cell and Genome Sciences Building, Farmington, Conn.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Administrators at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington didn’t think much of the 1970s building they planned to turn into the school’s Cell and Genome Sciences Building. It’s not that the former toxicology research facility was in such terrible shape, but the 117,800-sf structure had almost no windows and its interior was dark and chopped up.
| Oct 12, 2010
The Watch Factory, Waltham, Mass.
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards — Gold Award. When the Boston Watch Company opened its factory in 1854 on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Mass., the area was far enough away from the dust, dirt, and grime of Boston to safely assemble delicate watch parts.
| Oct 12, 2010
Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, Cleveland, Ohio
27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Gold Award. The Cuyahoga County Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument was dedicated on the Fourth of July, 1894, to honor the memory of the more than 9,000 Cuyahoga County veterans of the Civil War.
