After a lengthy courtship, Vancouver-based consulting firm Maul Foster and Alongi has acquired Portland-based strategic planning and design company the Mitchell Nelson Group.
Founded by Jim Maul, Tom Foster and Neil Alongi in 1996, the company started out as four employees bringing in revenues of $500,000 a year.
The merger added five staff and new landscape architecture and community planning services to MFA’s focus of civil engineering, environmental compliance, environmental site assessment and remediation, permitting, litigation services and more recently GIS services and planning and public affairs.
Now, at nearly 50 employees, the company is seeing revenues of more than $6 million.
The attraction
Mitchell Nelson Group Founder John Nelson said the beginning of the acquisition was like a couple catching each others’ eye from across the room.
The two firms became acquainted more than five years ago, working together on various projects in the public and private sectors.
The firms shared common business practices, and neither considered itself a “volume operation.”
“We saw each other and it was this mutual attraction,” Nelson said. “We dated for a long time. … Last fall, we took those first steps and said what do you suppose we start living together?”
They closely examined the benefits and risks.
On the plus side was having a more complete team internally with a bigger tool box, said Alongi, who is a principal engineer.
“It’s easier and more fun to work that way,” he said. “You’re on the same team, which is far more interesting.”
With new employees come new relationships, and it helps to be able to sit down and talk without a second conversation running through your head about who’s billing what or who the project lead is, said Nelson, who is a principal planner and landscape architect.
Market forces also came into play.
Maul Foster and Alongi was getting more requests for master planning services, and with the addition of Principal Planner Kevin Snyder, the firm saw the need to expand, said Foster, who is a principal environmental scientist.
Snyder worked very closely with the Mitchell Group on a project at the Port of Kalama.
“We were in the trenches together, and we really got to know each other,” Snyder said.
The only risk, they figured, was cultural. What if the fit wasn’t quite right?
“That eats at a company,” said Steven Taylor, a principal engineer and chief financial officer. “Fit was very important to us.
“On the business side, there was the economic perspective, but almost more importantly, we looked really closely at our personalities and cultures.”
But in the end, all signs indicated the fit was a good one, and last winter, they formally agreed to start the legal process of forming a union.
The acquisition was official Aug. 1. Principals did not disclose the acquisition price.
The acquisition gave the firm instant credibility in the marketplace, Snyder said.
“Our clients are more willing to engage and more impressed with our skills,” he said.
New territory
When you buy a company, you’re buying the company, not the individuals – which is where the value lies, Nelson said.
Each of the Mitchell Nelson employees was given an offer, and all accepted, much to Nelson’s relief.
The transition has been remarkably smooth, Taylor said, but it’s triggered interesting conversations, such as figuring out how to brand this new company and what to call it.
For now, they’ve settled on the Mitchell Nelson Group, a division of Maul Foster and Alongi.
There are two offices in Portland, one in Vancouver and one in Seattle.
In time, the Portland offices may be consolidated.
The firm is already considering two to three more hires because demand for services has increased. It is positioned to grow 10 percent to 20 percent in 2008, Foster said.
In February, MFA received an Oregon Brownfields Award from the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality, the Northwest Environmental Business Council and the Oregon Economic and Community Development Dept.
The award celebrates companies that implement innovative cleanup projects that rehabilitate contaminated industrial or commercial properties.
And in July, MFA teamed with several Oregon wineries and vineyards to become part of the Oregon Governor’s Carbon Neutral Initiative, which aims to provide tools to help winemakers reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions.
The company is helping to develop a standard tool to account for and report greenhouse gas emissions within the wine industry.
Nelson said he was encouraged to see the firm’s commitment to sustainability.
Now the company is working more with habitat restoration, which combines engineering and landscape architecture, and GIS services, one of its fastest service sectors.
