TZL 1317

TRANSACT IONS GPI ACQUIRES NEW HAMPSHIRE FIRM MHF DESIGN CONSULTANTS, INC. Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. has announced the acquisition of MHF Design Consultants, Inc. , a 24-person civil engineering and surveying firm, located in Salem, New Hampshire. The MHF engineers and surveyors join our multi- discipline engineering team of more than 1,500 professionals that have been providing professional engineering services throughout the United States for over 50 years. MHF’s staff provide a comprehensive range of civil engineering and land surveying services relative to understanding the land and environment as a means of achieving development of the highest quality. “MHF’s experience allows GPI to continue to grow geographically while providing diversification in the depth of services that we provide in New England,” said GPI’s Executive Vice President, and manager of the New England operations, Tim Letton, P.E. MHF Principal Engineer, Frank Monteiro, P.E. said, “This merger brings additional depth and strength to MHF’s ability to serve our clients and continue our long-term relationships.”

“As this transition of ownership occurs, very little will change on a day-to-day basis. Our exceptional staff of engineers, licensed surveyors, and designers – who are truly the backbone of this enterprise – will continue to provide their expertise,” said MHF Principal Engineer Mark Gross, P.E. “I have every confidence that this transition into the GPI family will be successful and will allow us to grow both individually and as a company and continue to provide excellence in civil engineering surveying and land development services.” Gross and Monteiro will join the GPI Senior Management Team, where Mark’s role will become GPI New England’s Director of Land Development – Permitting and Frank’s role will be Director of Land Development – Engineering. Heather Monticup, P.E., GPI New England’s current Director of Land Development will become Director of Land Development – Traffic. Monticup, Gross, and Monteiro will continue to work together on their joint projects, to ensure projects are getting delivered with the same coordinated effort and high quality as they always have. Reporting directly to the branch manager, the new Land

Development group and overall combined resources of the New England Branch will allow us to better service our current and future clients on their land development projects. “GPI and MHF share the same philosophy fostering an employee focused culture, with a focus on action and results. This approach yields a successful work product from which employees and clients alike benefit,” said GPI President/CEO Christer Ericsson, P.E. “In the end, it’s all about developing the staff to produce high-quality projects that earn the support of clients, meeting their goals, while having fun doing it. We are looking forward to having MHF join GPI which has successfully grown over the years through the right balance of organic growth and strategic acquisitions.” Greenman-Pedersen, Inc. is nationally ranked in the Engineering News Record as one of the Top 60 design firms. With a staff of more than 1,500 professionals, GPI’s wide-ranging resources allow the firm to handle projects for both public and private sector clients varying in size and complexity.

DAVID COYNE, from page 9

To counteract this “template syndrome,” find opportunities in which your staff can be challenged to explain difficult concepts through narrative or even graphical means. Even if it’s just a low-stress internal discussion, you may discover some unexpected natural talents. ❚ ❚ Reading is still fundamental. Remember how I congratulated you at the onset for reading this article? OK, that was cheap. But it had a point: professionals who continue to read and remain willing to learn are, unsurprisingly, the best communicators. They appreciate and understand the value of new and useful information, and tend to acquire more advanced skills, such as presentation sequence and narrative simplification, that make our disciplines palatable to others. ❚ ❚ Keep it personal. There is no more important means of stewardship in our industry than the ability to engage with a stakeholder and conduct a professional, productive conversation. How are you cultivating this skill in your staff? Something as simple as a weekly project progress report to their peers can develop this ability in a junior staffer. Low- stakes client interactions, such as phone calls in which good news is to be offered, can be delegated to employees who need practice in conveying technical concepts to a non-technical person. Although the means will continue to evolve, the need for effective communicators in the AEC industries will remain of utmost importance, and we truly must meet this challenge. Those that can make meaningful connections, turn heads, and inspire audiences will emerge as the successful leaders of our fields for generations to come. DAVID COYNE is a principal and the COO of Liberty Environmental, Inc., which provides environmental consulting and engineering services to clients across the United States. Coyne can be reached at dcoyne@ libertyenviro.com.

needs. Given the increasing complexity of our disciplines, we require professionals who can face an audience and clearly relate the need for technical solutions to our society’s greatest challenges. If those people fail to appear, we need not ponder such a scenario for too long to see its potential danger. So, how can we as AEC firm owners, managers, and mentors work to correct this? ❚ ❚ Find strengths and adapt. Your top field technician who can’t write a coherent sentence at age 30 isn’t going to become a gifted author anytime soon, so don’t kill yourself trying. Instead, find how he or she can shine in another way. Perhaps they’re effective verbally in front of a crowd, or in smaller networking environments where they can discuss project concepts comfortably. Even social media in its various forms can prove a productive environment for those who might describe themselves as communication-challenged. “Despite the emergence of multiple new technologies which have turned the nature of communications on its head over the past 20 years, there is still an absolute need for someone, somewhere, to make sense of what we do and put it down in writing for others to understand.” ❚ ❚ Encourage originality. We all tend to rely heavily on templates and boilerplate, and for good reason. They wrap our methods and findings into efficient, consistent deliverables. However, adhering strictly to boilerplate over time risks stifling the development of critical analytical writing skills.

THE ZWEIG LETTER October 21, 2019, ISSUE 1317

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