Employee-Owned Firm Still Thriving After 90 Years

By Scott Blair

Southwest Contractor has selected HDR as the 2007 Design Firm of the Year. Specializing in both architectural and engineering, HDR succeeded in increasing revenue sharply in 2006 without sacrificing quality.

HDR Inc. was founded in 1917 as the Henningson Engineering Co. by H. H. Henningson, who saw a need for a civil engineering firm in the small communities around Omaha, Neb., where HDR still has its headquarters today.

Now celebrating its 90th anniversary with over 6,400 professionals in more than 150 offices around the world, HDR has retained many of the same values it was founded on.

“Employees at HDR do the right things for the right reasons, for our clients, our co-workers and for the community,” says Laurie Roden, Southwest area manager for HDR’s engineering division.

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In 1996, employees successfully bought back the firm from its French ownership, which had owned HDR since the mid-1980s. “We felt like employee ownership would not only be the key to our success, but it is the key item we use for career development,” Roden says. Today, nearly 100% of the firm’s employees are also owners. “It’s something that really helps us recruit and retain employees too.”

In the Southwest, HDR has 544 employees divided among the firms’ architectural and engineering divisions in 14 offices.

The company is divided into separate architectural and engineering divisions because “it lets us put leaders where leaders are best,” Roden says

The architectural division, led in the Southwest by managing principal Michael Jackson, specializes in healthcare, justice facilities and high tech. The engineering side specializes in environmental and resource management, water/wastewater and transportation.

In July 2001, the engineering division’s transportation expertise was put to the test after being selected to provide design and construction support services for the Hoover Bypass Project by the Federal Highway Administration. The $238 million project entails a 1,960-ft span across the Colorado River Gorge just south of Hoover Dam, with twin concrete cast-in-place arches rising more than 900 ft above the river. Supported by 15 vertical piers rising from each arch, the roadway will join Arizona and Nevada upon completion in late 2010.

Not to be outdone, the architectural team landed a contract to provide master planning, programming and design for the Renown Medical Center campus in Reno, Nev. The centerpiece of the $240 million project is a fast-track, 10-story patient tower, which adds 190 private rooms and 515,000 sq ft of space.

HDR also provided mechanical and electrical engineering services on the project, which opens this fall.

“Working fast-track on a project this large makes it even more complicated, but HDR has some very high-powered communications, coordination and drawing systems,” says Newton Chase, director of facilities and major projects with Renown. “You don’t have to worry that the architects and engineers are tussling with each other. They bring what I would call the ‘intellectual infrastructure’ to the table as a well-respected national firm that is oriented on healthcare.”

HDR was ranked #2 among all design firms in healthcare construction by Engineering News-Record, and ranked #19 overall. In the Southwest, HDR ranked #1 among all firms performing design work in the region, and ranked #2 in healthcare, #3 in environmental and transportation and #5 in water/wastewater.

The firm recently acquired several companies in the region, including Santa Fe-based natural resources consulting firm FishPro Inc. in 2002 and Phoenix-based transportation firm S.R. Beard & Associates LLC in 2005.

“We don’t acquire firms just for the numbers, we acquire them to either get into new geographical regions or new service disciplines,” Roden says. “We push gaining market share.”

Growth is managed through annual strategic plans that look ahead several years. Next month, the firm will roll out a long-term plan detailing where the firm wants to be in 2012.

Part of this planning involves looking at new technologies or systems that may benefit their clients, Roden says. The firm has participated in a variety of alternative delivery projects, including CM-at-risk, design build and job-order contracting.

The firm is currently involved in the design build Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication building. The $71 million building, located on the new downtown Phoenix campus of Arizona State University, broke ground in February and will house 223,000 sq ft of high-tech classrooms, studio space, newsrooms and offices. The six-story building will be skinned with a dynamic mixture of glass, metal and masonry.

The HDR team is precisely what you would want in an architectural firm: smart, innovative, responsive, forward-thinking and collaborative,” says Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School. Along with the team of Culver City, Calif.-based design architect Steven Ehrlich Architects and Phoenix-based contractor Sundt Construction, “HDR continues to amaze us with making this very ambitious project a reality – and within an incredibly tight time frame.”

Developed by Ian Bruce Eicher, the 3,000-room condo-hotel property is also scheduled to open in 2009.

HDR will team on another ASU project with Steven Ehrlich Architects, the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building IV on the Tempe campus. The estimated $130 million building is planned as a 240,000-sq-ft high-rise structure comprised of high technology research, laboratory and office space.

Another HDR-designed high-tech research facility, the National Security Sciences Building, won Southwest Contractor’s “Design Build Project of the Year” in the New Mexico Best of 2005 awards. One of the judges remarked “this project is the epitome of the beneficial nature of design build delivery.” 

HDR is also involved in project and program management for its clients. Last year, the firm was selected for the City of Albuquerque Modern Streetcar project, a $200 million system that upon completion in 2009 will link the Central Avenue corridor from Old Town to Nob Hill, and to the Albuquerque International Sunport.

HDR also managed the planning, design and construction of the New Mexico Rail Runner Express Phase 1. The route, from Belen to Bernalillo, was completed on-time in July 2006 at a cost of $16.9 million.

David Moody, engineering director with the city of Peoria, says that HDR has been helpful in managing their capital programs, coming up with cost estimates for city budgeting, performing inspections and hiring contractors and consultants. “They have a wide breadth of expertise, which we find very useful,” Moody says. “We know that we can go to HDR to find an answer as opposed to having to go and try to find a consulting firm that may be specializing in only one field.”

HDR prides itself in this kind of service, Roden says. “We are a client-based marketing firm where we build relationships with our clients - we don’t just pursue work.”

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