Annual Review 2021-2022: Reimagining Community, Craft, Culture & Climate by Thornton Tomasetti

Community Craft Culture Climate

Annual Review 2021/2022

REIMAGINING

Table of Contents 1

Message From the Chairman & Co-CEOs

Introduction

Reimagining Community

Reimagining Craft

Reimagining Culture

Reimagining Climate

Conclusion

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G N I N I GA M I E R

Community Craft Culture Climate

Message From the Chairman & Co-CEOs

REIMAGINING

fter disruption comes the inevitable discussion about the “new normal.” But when that discussion draws mainly from past experience, it may constrain a vision of the future. True innovation requires us all – our people, our clients and the end users of our projects – to reimagine a path different from what we anticipated. And it compels us to identify specific areas we need to address if we’re to make lasting contributions along the way. For us, these are community, craft, culture and climate. Strong communities help us brave uncertainty, so they’re more important than ever. That’s why we’re striving to create a workplace that supports all our people. How and why we work are community focused too: there is joy in achieving a vision that is accomplished only in collaboration with all stakeholders. Much of our work is literally building communities: designing, analyzing and renewing structures so they meet or exceed requirements for function, sustainability, resilience and aesthetics. That work – our craft – always starts with people. The pandemic has challenged us to live our values by working harder than ever to build an equitable, inclusive culture. And we’re holding ourselves accountable for our environmental, social and governance goals by publishing Global Reporting Initiative-referenced reporting on our progress. With a warming world in need of urgent action, climate impact has moved to the forefront of decision-making, for ourselves and our clients. We’re adapting the tools and methods of our craft to reduce carbon emissions and find new ways to secure a livable future for us all. Disruption is hard, and it poses real risks. But it also offers unprecedented opportunities for those who seek them. If we can reimagine the possibilities – by being inquisitive, challenging boundaries, advancing ingenuity and applying our craft to solve big problems – we can make the most of this moment. Read on for some of the ways we’re working toward it. We look forward to realizing that future with you.

Tom Scarangello Executive Chairman

Pete DiMaggio Co-CEO

Mike Squarzini Co-CEO

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

Community

Craft

Offices. Organizations. Neighborhoods. Cities. Countries. Communities where people interact with one another and the built environment exist at all scales. Much of what we do contributes to making the places where people live, work and play. Reimagining the life cycles of these places – how they are designed, built, used, renewed and, eventually, replaced – can have a huge impact on how communities function, as well as on culture and climate.

Advances in technology – especially in artificial intelligence, machine learning, visualization and data analytics – are revolutionizing the art and science of engineering investigation, analysis and design. Reimagining how technology can change our work, its processes and products, is transforming our craft, leading to better, faster decisions and new opportunities for makers and users of engineering.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

olatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity.

When you struggle to predict with confidence, when long-standing assumptions and practices give way, and when the pace of change accelerates, it’s time to take a new path – to reimagine what you value, what you do and how you work. This review highlights four areas of focus for our reimagining. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.

Culture

Climate

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many people to reconsider how they make a living and how they make a life. Disparities and injustices have been thrown into sharper relief, as has our imperative to operate responsibly and address difficult moral questions. Reimagining these elements of culture at all scales can promote opportunity, equity and wellness – and convert the Great Attrition into the Great Attraction.

The past two years have laid bare the challenges of a truly worldwide crisis. How can we apply what we’ve learned to address another global problem of our time: the devastating effects of unchecked climate change? Reimagining ways to apply sciencebased approaches can help us limit the pace, effects and costs – human, environmental and economic – of a changing climate.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Reimagining Community

ffices. Organizations. Neighborhoods. Cities. Countries. Communities where people interact with one another and the built environment exist at all scales. Much of what we do contributes to making the places where people live, work and play. Reimagining the life cycles of these places – how they are designed, built, used, renewed and, eventually, replaced – can have a huge impact on how communities function, as well as on culture and climate.

How to Say “Opportunity” in Any Language

Mosaic, our multicultural employee

network group (ENG), celebrated International Mother Language Day (February 21) with a firm-wide panel discussion titled “Speaking My Language: A Q&A With Multilingual Leaders.” Participants (right) from a variety of departments and disciplines shared stories about their languages and communities. They related how being multilingual has affected their careers and how they are navigating those impacts – both the challenges and the opportunities. For more on Mosaic, our ENGs and equity, diversity and inclusion at Thornton Tomasetti, see page 30.

Francesca Brando Vice President

Dennis Poon Vice Chairman

Eileene Vicencio Legal Assistant

Liling Cao, Principal

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Dorian Soler, Principal and Director of Office Operations

The Robert R. Douglass Pedestrian Bridge: Keeping Lower Manhattan Connected “If I had to choose one word that defines this project, it

would be community,” says Associate Principal Courtney Clark, project manager for the Robert R. Douglass Pedestrian Bridge, “because that was the clear driving force behind it.” More than just a passage across the Henry Hudson Parkway, linking Battery Park City to the Financial District, the bridge is a reflection of the communities it serves. Local residents and organizations like the Battery Park City Authority championed its completion and were involved throughout the design, advocating for a crossing that would be safe, beautiful, accessible to all and usable throughout the year. The bridge, designed with WXY Architecture + Urban Design, is named in honor of Robert R. Douglass, founding chairman of

the Alliance for Downtown New York and a driving force behind the building of Battery Park City. It permanently replaces the Rector Street Pedestrian Bridge – itself a temporary replacement for bridges damaged or destroyed on 9/11. The new bridge opened in early 2020, but its dedication was delayed until June 2021 due to COVID. The bridge’s lightweight fiber-reinforced polymer deck (onetenth the weight of an equivalent concrete deck) allowed it to be assembled off-site and lifted into place by a crane to avoid disrupting traffic. It features a bright, transparent design, with its almond-shaped trusses echoed by the contours of a trellis-style glazed roof that makes the bridge usable in all kinds of weather. And elevators on both sides of the freeway ensure accessibility for all users.

The bridge spans a busy highway, providing safe access between Battery Park City and the Financial District.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Capital One Center: A Vital New Heart for a Suburban Community A s Metro, the subway system serving the Washington, D.C.,

region, expanded westward toward Dulles Airport, Capital One made big plans for a new transit-oriented development. On a 26-acre site in Tysons, Virginia, that was once largely cut off by highways from the surrounding apartment and condominium complexes, Capital One Center now sports offices, a hotel, a performing arts center, public green spaces, sculpture parks, a grocery store, bars and restaurants. It’s a vibrant urban center for the suburban neighborhood. Our engineers have provided structural design for several of the projects in the development. We started with Capital One Tower, a 1.7-million-square-foot office building designed by HKS Architects. Next came Capital One Hall, a high-end performance space and community cornerstone, which opened in 2021. Designed by HGA, it houses a 1,600-seat main theater, a 225-seat black-box theater and a large atrium. A rooftop park features a 230-seat amphitheater, a sculpture garden and a biergarten, all set amid lush landscaping. The performing arts center shares a parking garage and loading dock with its neighbor, a 1.2-million-square-foot building that comprises a hotel and a grocery store. This building was designed by a different team, led by Gensler, so coordinating the common below-grade structure was critical. Having both structural engineering teams in the same office simplified collaboration. Next up? Another office tower that’s really two buildings connected by an atrium and tied together by a series of bridges that span the open space in between. This efficient structural solution meant that a large expansion joint between the two main structures – complicated to design and costly to build and maintain – wasn’t necessary. We were also hired by the steel fabricator to perform erection engineering for the project, which will be completed in 2022. Our work at the site continues, with design underway on two more projects from the development’s master plan, which includes residential buildings and more office and hotel space.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

The 23-story west tower and the 30-story east tower of the newest office building (far left) are tied structurally by 10 bridges – some steel, some concrete – that span the 1.6-million-square-foot building’s atrium. The podium for the Watermark Hotel (far right) was designed to support two additional towers. Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Reimagining Safety & Wellness in Public Spaces With GoGuide Our security design and consulting

experts invented GoGuide™ in 2020 to help people return more safely to public spaces – stadiums, conference centers, performance venues, museums and schools – in the wake of COVID.

GoGuide combines computer vision from Intel Corp. and system integration and implementation functionality from PMY Group with technologies like Sterilray’s surface and air disinfection and Wicket’s facial authentication.

Many technologies and strategies claim to make it safer for people to gather. The difficulty for most facility managers is figuring out which ones really work and how to combine them for greatest

effect. GoGuide is a flexible solution that brings together artificial intelligence (AI), technological products and expert advice to help organizations keep workers and patrons safe while protecting privacy. Since its inception, though, GoGuide has evolved to do much more. The data-driven crowd-intelligence platform can be used to improve a space’s wellness beyond COVID, to augment security and to analyze – and enhance – the patron experience.

EXPERIENCE WELLNESS SECURITY Brings together all the data for monitoring and analysis.

HEALTHY INDOORS

OBJECT DETECTION

Airﬂow modeling and disinfection technologies reduce the spread of infection.

Monitor for mask compliance or suspicious packages.

PATRON FLOW

ROOM OCCUPANCY

Identify bottlenecks or underutilized areas and automatically update wayﬁnding systems.

Monitor and maintain occupancy limits and social distancing.

FACIAL AUTHENTICATION Enables touchless entry and purchases.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

CROWD MASSING

See where and how long people gather to optimize placement of exhibits, amenities or ads.

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

GoGuide won the Top Project Innovation During the Pandemic prize at Anchin’s 11th annual Construction & Design Awards in 2021.

GoGuide integrates data from sources like mobile apps, security cameras, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) or radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags, and other sensors. It uses computer vision and AI to analyze this data and provide immediate feedback. An example? The system can alert staff if room occupancy exceeds a specified limit. At the same time, it can update electronic signage and limit entry by temporarily locking turnstiles or gates.

What’s next for GoGuide? We’re working with the International WELL Building Institute and our in-house sustainability experts to explore ways the system can monitor, track and analyze air and water quality, as well as other wellness performance metrics, to help building and business owners gain and maintain WELL Certification.

An Update for Central Stockholm It started in 2017 with a feasibility study. In 2022, we learned that our team (led by Foster + Partners, with Marge Arkitekter, Land Arkitektur, Wenanders, TAM Group and Ramboll) had been selected by developer Jernhusen to design the redevelopment of the Stockholm Central Station.

Thornton Tomasetti is leading structural and protective design in collaboration with Ramboll, as well as providing façade, vibration and sustainability services.

Courtesy Foster + Partners

This multiphase project will add a large deck above the existing tracks and infrastructure and create new public and commercial space on top. The new district will expand the capacity of the station – the central hub of Sweden’s rail network – and build new links between the east and west sides of the city.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Making Bridges Last: Resilience Isn’t Just for Buildings

Benjamin Franklin Bridge Cable Dehumidification The resilience of any suspension bridge relies, in large part, on the condition of its cables. So when an internal inspection uncovered damage to the cable wires of the 96-year-old Benjamin Franklin Bridge, our job was to help preserve them. The solution sounds simple: wrap the cables in an elastic membrane and pump in dry air to evaporate moisture and expel it through strategically placed ejection ports. But these cables presented an unusual challenge: oil had been injected into them to coat their wires and inhibit corrosion. Over time, much of the oil had hardened, impeding the passage of air. So how do you inject air when coagulated oil is blocking it?

A series of “blow tests” revealed how far air could travel along each cable. This determined where we installed air injection and ejection points. Sensors placed along the length of the bridge measure conditions at these entry and exit points. A buffer chamber in the bridge anchorage automatically turns the system on or off when the cables approach predetermined relative humidity limits. This is the first time this type of dehumidification has been performed on bridge cables containing oil. Resilience Over the East River We’re also helping improve the resilience of New York’s BronxWhitestone Bridge. Our work includes flood and storm-surge protection, replacement of emergency generators, upgrading and relocating electrical and mechanical equipment, and improving redundancy in the electrical systems.

©LifetimeStock/Shutterstock.com

The Benjamin Franklin Bridge is a vital link between communities, carrying pedestrians, public transit and 100,000 motor vehicles per day across the Delaware River, from Camden, New Jersey, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

Renovated “Big White Store” Brings People Back to Work & Play in Downtown Peoria

REIMAGINING

In 1876, when a group of nuns arrived in Peoria, Illinois, and

began caring for patients free of charge, the city welcomed what would later become the Order of Saint Francis HealthCare (OSF). The nonprofit healthcare provider has since become the city’s largest employer. Now its new headquarters is providing a dual opportunity – to consolidate its administrative teams and to help revitalize downtown Peoria. To house the new headquarters, OSF selected one of the city’s most revered historic buildings. The imposing edifice, originally designed by Holabird and Roche, started life in 1905 as the Schipper & Block department store. The city’s first steel-framed structure, it employed top-of-the-line technology, with massive floor-to-ceiling heights, a stunning white terra-cotta façade and, later, the city’s first escalator. The seven-story “Big White Store” was the tallest structure in Peoria at the time. But as the downtown population began migrating to the suburbs, it was subdivided and eventually totally vacated. Our renewal, façade and sustainability teams worked with architects from Dewberry to transform the abandoned department store into an elegant suite of administrative offices. Restoration of the historic façade repaired damaged portions and recreated missing original material. To preserve the look of the building’s exterior, satisfy today’s more stringent building codes, and accommodate variations in the sizes and shapes of the original window openings, we designed new, custom-made aluminum windows. Our hygrothermal analysis identified areas where moisture could become trapped, which guided our placement of insulation within the building envelope to improve its energy performance. The project benefits the surrounding community in multiple ways. All contractors employed on the renovation were local. And when fully operational, the new OSF headquarters will bring about 700 people into Peoria’s downtown every day, helping reinvigorate the area both socially and economically.

Top: The “Big White Store” before work began. Much of the historic façade had been replaced with precast panels and narrow ribbon windows. Bottom: The renovation restored the original appearance of the windows and terra-cotta elements. When construction is complete, the building is expected to be named a National Historic Landmark.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Arecibo Radio Telescope: From Repair to Recovery

A photomosaic assembled from drone images shows the damage to the Arecibo dish after the December 2020 collapse. The largest part of the structure that supported the instrument array, which was suspended above the dish, is visible at about 5 o’clock. Its debris field extends toward the center of the dish.

in Puerto Rico collapsed on December 1, 2020, plans were already underway for a cable replacement program at the 57-year-old facility. What we began in August 2020 as a consultation regarding a cable-socket failure rapidly switched gears. Now the issues were emergency response, site safety, stabilization, and condition and damage assessment. Later would come post-collapse remediation and recovery and a forensic investigation to determine the underlying causes of the collapse. No single group or firm could deliver all these services at the pace required by the facility operator, University of Central Florida, and its owner, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). As the engineer of record for emergency repairs, construction engineering and final repairs, we worked with key stakeholders to assemble a team that could address all these requirements. The work touched many communities. The 305-meter telescope at Arecibo was the world’s largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years and contributed to major advances in our understanding of our solar system and the universe. “This iconic telescope had a long history of important discoveries and was close to the hearts of many young scientists in Puerto Rico and beyond, who credit school trips and other outstanding educational programs for their interest in science,” says Alison Peck, astronomical sciences program director at the NSF, who oversees the Arecibo facility.

a possible controlled demolition. Joining the post-collapse effort were Langan and CSA Group, mainly to evaluate soil that had been contaminated by several hundred gallons of hydraulic fluids that fell 150 meters from the platform when the telescope collapsed. All soil impacted by the spill was removed. Safely clearing the site to gain access was a complex process. It required stabilization, demolition or repair of buildings damaged by falling debris; recovery of wire rope from the site; removal of the fallen remains of the towers; and stabilization of the portions of the towers that were still standing.

Community Craft Culture Climate

When the Arecibo radio telescope

REIMAGINING

Thornton Tomasetti’s Blake Berger inspects cables and installs clamps to keep the wires together before contractors cut them to manageable lengths and move them to storage. Each cable was marked with an identifying code.

Starting in December 2020, we focused on site cleanup, such as the removal of tons of collapsed steel, safety engineering and soil testing – which confirmed that no hazardous material had leached into the underlying aquifer. Stabilizing roadways and further stabilization of the towers were also important tasks. With partners at the Fritz Engineering Laboratory at Lehigh University, we began forensic work to determine the cause of the collapse. A report of our findings is scheduled for release later this year.

The entire project team assists as we determine the safest means to demolish the collapsed truss, visible at left.

To tackle the massive scale of the forensic work – the telescope reflector covers 20 acres, equivalent to 11 soccer fields – we mobilized nearly 30 forensics experts from across our firm. We had engaged demolition contractor D.H. Griffin the week before the collapse to review the situation and recommend

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Building Blocks Grow Up

When Dutch hospitality company

citizenM Hotels set out to reimagine how hotels are developed, built and run, they bet big on modular construction. Many of citizenM’s properties are composed of prefabricated rooms stacked like blocks on and around a base and core customized for each site. One of the latest, the citizenM Washington NoMa Hotel, with 10 stories and 296 rooms, is nearing completion. Our team worked with architect Gensler to design the supporting structure. The fairly standard basement and first floor are topped by a second floor with a two-foot-thick post-tensioned concrete slab that serves as a platform for the steel-framed room modules. Two concrete cores with elevators, stairs and mechanical shafts provide lateral stability for the stacked modules. We also designed a steel-framed penthouse and platform for a green roof.

Figuring out the best way to connect the modules to the core, and understanding how everything will function as a completed 103,000-square-foot structure, were challenging puzzles we enjoyed solving.

“ We worked with the module designers to develop tolerancefriendly details for the cores to make connecting the blocks easier so construction could move quickly.”

Our team also brought local knowledge to the permitting process. This was the first modular hotel built in Washington, so we explained to city officials how the system and the process work. We also agreed to take on the responsibility of engineer of record, even though we didn’t design the modules. Our focus on constructable design and open communication paid off, and in the end, the permitting process went quickly and smoothly.

– Colleen Harper, Senior Engineer

Left: The citizenM NoMa in Washington, D.C., is set to open in spring 2022. The benefits of modular buildings include faster construction; improved worker safety; better quality as a result of having much of the work done in a manufacturer’s facility rather than on-site; and reduced construction waste.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Courtesy Polcom Group

Courtesy Gensler

Right: Modules under construction in Poland.

Community Craft Culture Climate

Climate Pledge Arena Raises the Roof

REIMAGINING

When the Kraken, Seattle’s new National Hockey League team, needed a

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board designated the coliseum a local landmark in 2017. This meant that any renovation would need to preserve the roof, curtain wall and exterior concrete elements designed by modernist architect Paul Thiry. So the project team engaged in some extremely creative problem-solving to extend the building footprint at the plaza level and create a new below-grade seating bowl. Since excavation for the new event level would undermine the foundations of the 44-million-pound historic roof, we designed a temporary roof support (TRS) system to lift it off its foundations. The TRS system kept the roof suspended for two years, resisting wind and seismic forces while construction progressed beneath it.

Courtesy Oak View Group

world-class venue to call home, they found it in the former Seattle Center Coliseum (more recently called KeyArena). A local attraction since it was constructed for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, the one-time residence of the SuperSonics has hosted everything from one of the Beatles’ final performances to an NBA All-Star game.

Climate Pledge Arena is the new home of the Seattle Kraken – the first Seattle hockey team to compete for the Stanley Cup in nearly 100 years.

Powered exclusively by renewable energy, the venue – now named Climate Pledge Arena – is billed as the world’s first net-zero-carbon arena. The new 800,000-squarefoot below-grade space, where more than 17,000 spectators can gather for hockey and basketball games and other events, opened in October 2021 to rave reviews from fans. Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Reimagining Craft

dvances in technology – especially in artificial intelligence, machine learning, visualization and data analytics – are revolutionizing the art and science of engineering investigation, analysis and design. Reimagining how technology can change our work, its processes and products, is transforming our craft, leading to better, faster decisions and new opportunities for makers and users of engineering.

Evolving to Serve Our Clients, Today & Tomorrow Twenty-five years ago, Thornton Tomasetti was considered a multidisciplinary firm with two main practice areas: engineering design for new structures, and forensic investigation and repair of failed or poorly performing ones.

As time and technology advanced, we added façade design and sustainability consulting services, integrating disciplines that reach their fullest potential together. And our CORE studio coalesced to develop technology for optimizing our designs and processes. In 2015, we joined forces with a major competitor, Weidlinger Associates. Both firms had many of the same capabilities – including active R&D, app and software development – but complementary differences were key. Strong protective design, applied science and transportation expertise expanded our multidisciplinary tool kit. And the fusion of two innovative cultures fueled new ways to help even more clients. Security design and consulting. Life sciences and biomechanics. Acoustics, noise and vibration. Resilience. Decarbonization. Master planning. Automation tools that use artificial intelligence and machine learning. These are among the offerings we’ve added in recent years. Each can stand on its own, but there’s proven value in the simplicity and synergy of multiple solutions under one roof. That’s why we’ll continue to expand our lineup and redefine what’s possible. What’s next? Whatever you need.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Defense Down Under We were recently awarded two contracts by the Australian Department of Defence. Our Edinburgh experts will collaborate with our staff in Australia to assist the Defence Science and Technology Group in commissioning a heavyweight shock-testing capability at the Underwater Explosion Test Facility (UETF) in Victoria. Our work will also support the Directorate of Naval Engineering in developing an airgun shock-testing capability for the UETF – to help determine the survivability of various shipboard components under battle conditions – and future full-scale ship shock testing.

In Silico Testing: At the Heart of Healthcare Research When you’re buying a T-shirt, your options are often limited:

large, medium or small. But what if you need a life-saving stent or valve implanted in your heart? The natural variations in the human body mean that our anatomy doesn’t often fit into predetermined categories of shape and size. Enter in silico testing. In silico is a technical term for an analysis that takes place in a computer model or simulation rather than in living patients. In silico trials enable medical professionals to simulate each person’s unique anatomy, then create and test devices virtually and predict their effectiveness – without ever cutting into a patient. The in silico method allows tests to be performed on hundreds of individuals simultaneously, expediting data collection. It also makes it possible to create a wide range of devices that fit

patients from specific age, race or gender groups that tend to share anatomical traits – or even to custom-build devices for a specific person. We’re using in silico testing to predict the behavior of implanted heart-valve frames. Using 4D MRI data, we conducted finite element analysis to simulate the motion of an aortic-valve frame in five patients. The models can predict contact pressure, leakage, movement of the frame over time, and distribution of stress before and after implantation. This technology improves device design, aids in identifying disease-related design issues, minimizes failures and helps doctors make more-informed decisions regarding the health of each of their patients.

Comparison of patient-specific aortic-valve-frame results, frame-to-anatomy apposition (left column), anatomy stress response (center column) and valve-frame strain response (right column), where red = high and blue = low.

PATIENT 1

PATIENT 2

Stress [MPa] (Avg: 75%)

+1.000e+00 +9.167e-01 +8.333e-01 +7.500e-01 +6.667e-01 +5.833e-01 +5.000e-01 +4.167e-01 +3.333e-01 +2.500e-01 +1.667e-01 +8.333e-02 +0.000e+00

PATIENT 1

Strain [-] +3.000e-03 +2.750e-03 +2.500e-03 +2.250e-03 +2.000e-03 +1.750e-03 +1.500e-03 +1.250e-03 +1.000e-03 +7.500e-03 +5.000e-03 +2.500e-03 +0.000e+00

PATIENT 2

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, It’ll Be Coded In 2017, The Atlantic magazine reported that AlphaGo, Google’s DeepMind computer self-taught Go-playing program, made “moves that other players describe as ‘alien’ and ‘from an alternate dimension.’” The article cites a paper published in Nature:

“ DeepMind revealed that a new version of AlphaGo (which they christened AlphaGo Zero) picked up Go from scratch, without studying any human games at all. AlphaGo Zero took a mere three days to reach the point where it was pitted against an older version of itself and won 100 games to zero.” Five years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) reached the point where it could teach itself to outperform the older version of itself that was based on human input. It was just a game of Go (an ancient Chinese game of strategy), but what does it portend for engineers and the built environment? A page of Senior Principal Scott Lomax’s notes from the Roux Institute session on Al.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

“AI can find patterns in very large combinations of data a lot better than humans can,” says Rob Otani, Thornton Tomasetti’s chief technology officer. “It’s not that it’s more creative, it just combines the intelligence of thousands of people.” So the question is when, not if, AI is coming to your project. To prepare for this revolution, we partnered in 2021 with Northeastern University’s Portland, Maine-based Roux Institute to give our leaders and frontline technical minds a primer on AI and its subset, machine learning (ML). The upshot? Our AI/ML advocacy group absorbed the basics from the Roux coursework and now meets monthly to strategize on a path forward. “There are so many instances where we have expert knowledge concentrated in the hands of a few people. How do we extract, capture and codify that knowledge so people who have five years of experience can learn faster from those with 50 years of experience?” says Senior Principal Scott Lomax, who participated in the course. Some cases we’re exploring: Quality Assurance/Quality Control: Converting QA/QC from an interim or end-stage review to a continuous, real-time process that applies intelligence from thousands of jobs. Smart Structural Monitoring: By analyzing patterns in visual, acoustic, vibration and displacement data over time, we could discover small problems before they become bigger ones. Design Automation: For iterative processes, like designing braced frames or shear walls, basing AI on 50 (or more) designs from our 70-year inventory of such work.

“ AI doesn’t use a person’s analog approach to problem-solving. It’s solving problems another way – that’s why it looks strange to us.” – Rob Otani, Chief Technology Officer

Business Decision-Making: Using AI-enabled business data for better prediction of company performance. This year, these and other ideas will compete in our AI/ML innovation tournament* to identify and pursue two or three of the most promising concepts. In the meantime, we’re collaborating with the Roux Institute to explore customization of its coursework to appeal more broadly to the AEC industry. “Thornton Tomasetti is pushing the envelope in the AEC community by driving change and innovation in the application of artificial intelligence. We are happy to join that effort to bring the AEC industry into this exciting world,” says Margaret Angell, head of partnerships and strategic initiatives at the Roux Institute.

* For more on how our innovation tournaments feed our R&D pipeline, see page 20. Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

General Innovation Process

How We Drive Innovation Have Idea

We’ve developed and refined a successful general

innovation process, illustrated here (top). The timeline (bottom) shows T2D2’s path from idea to commercialization.

Present Idea

Innovation tournament vote determines whether an idea proceeds to round-one funding.

Ideas are developed in-house or in collaboration with clients, colleagues and other partners.

Refine Idea

Quad Chart

Anytime Idea! Project-Related Innovation

What & Why?

Business Plan

How?

Work Plan

Innovation Tournament Collaboration With Academia

Workshop at Innovation Tournament Workshop at Innovation Tournament and Win Vote to Receive Funding Report and Present

From Concept to Company in 24 Months T2D2: The Thornton Tomasetti Damage Detector

Since 2016, 130 R&D projects have been started; 11 proposals were merged to combine the best ideas.

What started as an AI-enabled tool to detect cracks in concrete transformed into a product that can also analyze, monitor and store asset-condition information.

2016–2017

Sept. 2017

2018

2018–2019

Badri Hiriyur worked on computer vision, including self-driving cars. With Mahesh Bailakanavar, he applied for funding from a Japanese company to research the use of AI for crack detection. They were turned down.

CORE R&D proposal accepted.

Many conversations with regulators, building owners, tech companies and more altered the trajectory of the imagined product.

Six interns fast-tracked development, and an Android proof-of-concept app was created.

What if we applied AI to Thornton Tomasetti’s enormous database of building envelope conditions? Could we automate condition assessment? Do it by drone? Could scaffolding for inspection go away?

Badri Hiriyur

Mahesh Bailakanavar

Tony Balseca

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Katarzyna Burzyńska

Kristopher Dane

Elisabeth Malsch

Gary Mancini

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

Receive Executive Sponsor Initial Funding

Seed Funding

Accelerate Technology for Spin-Off

Thornton Tomasetti Accelerators TTWiiN I, II (p. 26)

Thornton Tomasetti Innovation Engines

Industry, Academic & Corporate Partnerships AEC Angels (p. 27) Universities Corporate TTWiiN Investment Partners Investing in 50+ companies directly and through AEC tech funds (p. 27)

Enhance Existing Services or Introduce New Capabilities

Ad hoc committee reviews and scores quad charts to select R&D projects.

60 percent of projects have resulted in a practice enhancement. A further 20 percent are in early stages. The remaining 20 percent are exploring new technologies and methodologies or contributing to firm-wide knowledge sharing.

Nov. 2018

2019–2020

July 2021

Jan. 2022

CORE R&D proposal to add thermal imaging for sustainability assessment.

Thornton Tomasetti funding to further develop product: assess and monitor deterioration in format easy to access and use.

T2D2 spun off as independent TTWiiN company (page 27).

• Completed phase B1 seed round • Hired Jonathan Ehrlich as COO • Won several awards, including: NYC Hack the Building Code Tech Crunch early-stage finalist Start-up winner MetaProp/Propel/MIPIM • Accelerating market penetration

Jonathan Ehrlich

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Sustainability Meets Wellness at New Research Laboratory Biopharmaceutical company Merck has a new West Coast

headquarters that is as green as it is healthy. In addition to holding LEED Gold ratings for core-and-shell and commercial interiors, the 308,000-square-foot building in South San Francisco also earned LEED Zero Energy and Zero Carbon certifications. And it’s one of the first laboratory buildings in the world to be WELL Certified. We provided sustainability consulting for the multidisciplinary research facility, designed by Jacobs, which houses some 300 scientists and support staff. Its nine-story tower is connected to a three-story amenities building, which features an auditorium, fitness center, café and parking garage. To conserve natural ecosystems and promote user well-being, nearly a quarter of the seven-acre site is devoted to green space. Pursuing LEED and WELL certifications together on a project of this scale was a rare challenge: while some crossover exists between them, it required careful planning to meet the criteria for both systems. Since this was our first time incorporating the WELL Building Standard into a laboratory building, creative thinking and close coordination with the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) provided valuable insights into how best to apply the standard to this complex project type.

Here are some of the strategies we applied that satisfy both LEED Zero and WELL criteria: Construction materials meet stringent volatile organic compound (VOC) content and emissions standards. Minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) 13 media filters in the ventilation system support occupant health. Mechanical systems are sized to accommodate carbon filters that remove VOCs and large particles. Use of tobacco products is prohibited in and around the property, including terraces and outdoor areas. Research and development buildings are typically energyintensive – and this one offered opportunities for significant energy reduction. Simulations developed early in the project’s design helped the team determine the best methods for reducing energy consumption. These included strategic building orientation, mechanical systems design and glazing selection. And our energy modeling showed that the addition of a photovoltaic array atop the parking structure could generate about 4 percent of the energy needed by the facility. We achieved additional energy and water savings by recommending energy-efficient LED lighting and water-conserving plumbing fixtures. And a custom measurement and verification plan ensures that building management can continuously track electricity usage and address discrepancies between actual and targeted energy savings.

The IWBI WELL rating system, launched in 2013, is the world’s first building certification that focuses exclusively on human health and wellness.

Merck’s research laboratory earned LEED and WELL certifications for promoting both environmental sustainability and human health.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

2022 Ingenuity Awards

ur annual Ingenuity Awards program showcases projects that demonstrate exceptional creativity and innovation. In the program’s third year, the winner and runner-up were selected by professionals within our firm, including many who led projects that placed in last year’s competition. The people’s choice award was determined by a poll of our employees. WINNER

LaGuardia Airport Cable Wall Façade Client: LaGuardia Gateway Partners/Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Project Location: Queens, New York

L aGuardia’s new Terminal B has increased capacity, relieved

congestion and reduced ground delays at one of America’s highest-profile airports. We provided structural, façade and protective design services for much of the massive upgrade, including an 83-foot-tall glass façade that stretches 1,142 feet along the main frontage roadway. The curtain-wall design required a narrow-depth multifloor system that could span 50 feet and resist large blast loads. The standard choice, a cable system, would be the first of its kind for blast loads of this magnitude, but placement of the cables presented aesthetic concerns and would apply immense vertical reactions on the supporting structure. Our solution? A conventional unitized system supported by cables embedded in its vertical aluminum mullions. The aluminum

frame provides continuous glass-edge support for blast loading, while the hidden cable braces the system laterally without adding depth or altering the aesthetic intent. To improve ductility and reduce the cable diameter, we designed an energy-absorbing anchor system that is flexible enough to yield under blast to limit loads on the supporting structure, yet stiff enough to resist environmental load conditions. Our protective design and security group worked closely with the architect, design-assist façade subcontractor and cable vendors, as well as our own structural and façade engineers, to develop a proof of concept and test program for this innovative curtain-wall system. We then performed nonlinear dynamic finite element analysis to validate the performance of the coupled cable-anchor system under blast loading. Once all parties agreed on the initial concept, we worked with the design-assist subcontractor to refine it and improve constructability. The result is a clear winner.

Community Craft Culture Climate

RUNNER-UP

JASSO Client: Naval Authority Group – U.K. Ministry of Defence Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom

REIMAGINING

The JASSO system tests the survivability of a variety of

ship components using the same innovative technology we developed for use in large-scale shock testing: an array of airguns simulates detonation of an underwater explosive. The portability of the machine means we can now bring the testing system to our clients. Its footprint matches that of a 20-by-8foot shipping container, so it can be transported to perform testing wherever it’s needed. The airgun technology allows rapid turnaround and requires minimal infrastructure. JASSO can test both conventional and ordnance equipment up to six meters long and as heavy as five tons. It can be tuned to match a range of shock and dynamic inputs, mimicking a variety of shock loading conditions.

PEOPLE’S CHOICE

Hana Dream Town Group Headquarters Architect: NBBJ Location: Incheon, South Korea

A series of interwoven open-air ramps connects the floors

HONORABLE MENTION

Arecibo Telescope Investigation (p. 12)

Courtesy NBBJ

of the new Hana Financial Group headquarters, creating a spiraling parklike space. As part of our structural and façade engineering services for the 15-story tower, we designed the ramps and introduced tuned mass dampers to limit vibrations. Two “tree columns” with branching tops provide intermediate support for the long sloping ramps and highlight the architect’s emphasis on green space. To create an enormous column-free ground-floor lobby, we designed sloping columns that directed the upper-floor loads into the structure’s concrete cores. With little room for three sloping columns to converge at a corewall corner, we provided custom concrete bearing supports to transfer the immense loads from above. Thanks to Our Panel of Distinguished Judges

Michael Bauer Principal, Structural Engineering Lynne Bregman Senior Associate, Protective Design & Security Raymond Daddazio Senior Consultant, Corporate

Client/Owner: University of Central Florida & Arecibo Observatory, National Science Foundation Location: Arecibo, Puerto Rico

Judd Galloway Vice President, Construction Engineering

David Geffen Hall Renovation

Juan Londono Associate, Applied Science

Architects: Diamond Schmitt (auditorium) Tod Williams Billie Tsien (public spaces) Project Location: New York, New York

Wayne Hostetler Principal, Renewal

Mark Membreno Project Engineer, Construction Engineering Colin Schless Vice President, Sustainability Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Innovation in AEC Industry Technology

he robust innovation process (p. 20) that supports our CORE R&D (ThorntonTomasetti.com/CORE-RD) efforts has yielded a wide variety of new tools, processes and technologies. Some stay in-house – permanently or during refinement – while others go to market through our TTWiiN innovation accelerator (TTWiiN.com). Here are some up-and-coming applications and updates on publicly available products.

SWAP This web application interfaces with commercial analysis programs, as well as our code-based design algorithms and rebar custom optimization routines, to automate many of the time-consuming aspects of shear-wall design. AR Spatial Notes We’re codeveloping an augmented-reality iOS app with SHoP Architects that can scan a room or a site and allow users to tag objects with comments that persist in the scan. One potential benefit? Faster organization and sharing of inspection data. JASSO We’re bringing our portable shock-testing machine (p. 25) to Australia to support the local market’s need for naval equipment testing.

Digital Wind Tunnel Computational fluid dynamics modeling can simulate the complex ways sun and wind will interact with a tall building. This app puts that power directly into 3D design models, analyzing how these forces interact with a building’s shape and orientation to optimize structural performance and pedestrian comfort in surrounding areas. AutoSTL Our suite of software applications integrates with Tekla Structures to automate steel connection engineering, modeling and estimating. It gives early feedback on material and connection quantity takeoffs and provides real-time evaluation of the material costs and fabrication time of design changes.

OnScale This cloud-based engineering simulation software is helping a major bicycle maker analyze frames and accessories, while a medical device manufacturer is using it for robotic exoskeleton design. OnScale.com

KONSTRU This 3D BIM common data environment interoperability program and digital-twin facilitator added SNAP, a leading Japanese structural analysis program, to its lineup of compatible software. KONSTRU.com

T2D2 This AI-powered damage detection and classification platform (p. 20) was named a winner in the New York City Department of Buildings’ Hack the Building Code Innovation Challenge. t2d2.ai

Hummingbird Ongoing refinements of this fluid harmonic damper are further reducing its size and broadening its application to more building types. It will be used in a 17-story mass-timber academic facility that is being built in Toronto starting in spring 2022. HummingbirdKinetics.com

PUMPKINTM Mounts After a 2021 test showed that PUMPKIN mounts can protect a 12-ton payload in a standard ISO/CONEX container, the technology was added to two standards: DEF STAN 02-887 allows U.K. naval designers to specify PUMPKINs, while ANEP-99 refers to their use in protecting mission modules for NATO navies. TaylorDevices.com/Products /PUMPKINmounts

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

ShapeDiver With the release of ShapeDiver 2.0, the Grasshopper-based online codesign application now has a revamped user interface, full augmented-reality integration and improved team collaboration features. ShapeDiver.com

Community Craft Culture Climate

TTWiiN Investment Partners

REIMAGINING

TTWiiN IP broadens Thornton Tomasetti’s exposure to emerging technologies and supports other drivers of innovation in the built environment. Our investments in MetaProp, Building Ventures fund, Shadow Ventures and XtreeE continue to advance, supporting AEC tech start-ups and helping bring innovations to market.

AEC Angels Spreads Its Wings A s a global driver of change and innovation, Thornton Tomasetti is always looking for

ingenious technologies and partnerships that can advance the architecture, engineering and construction industry. In 2020, we teamed with three leading AEC firms – STO Building Group, Syska Hennessy and SHoP Architects – to become a founding member of AEC Angels, a platform focused on evaluating, investing in and accelerating promising AEC-related tech start-ups. New products and solutions are arising almost daily; AEC firms are now self-funding R&D; venture capitalists are investing in our industry, IP development and adoption; and investments in AEC technologies are at an all-time high. “We see multiple start-up presentations monthly, across all AEC subsectors,” says Grant McCullagh, director of AEC Angels. “Our firms bring a well-informed and diverse perspective to our vetting process and can beta-test ideas as we make investments to help us all continue moving forward.”

A sampling of the firms included in the AEC Angels investment portfolio.

As users of these technologies, AEC Angels members understand the challenges these companies address and the business environment in which they will compete. Each member firm is a leader in the industry, with its own innovation ecosystem and in-house R&D teams that develop proprietary solutions and test and analyze internal and external IP. This experience helps the group identify new tools and technologies that have the greatest potential to benefit the industry. And if a product meets its investment goals, individual AEC Angels members fund its development. Visit AEC-Angels.com for details on AEC Angels investments and other opportunities.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Reimagining Culture

he COVID pandemic caused many people to reconsider how they make a living and how they make a life. Disparities and injustices have been thrown into sharper relief, as has our imperative to operate responsibly and address difficult moral questions. Reimagining these elements of culture at all scales can promote opportunity, equity and wellness – and convert the Great Attrition into the Great Attraction.

The John & Alice Coltrane Home Gets a New Groove The house at 247 Candlewood Path in Huntington, New York,

is architecturally unremarkable. Historically, it’s invaluable. The 1950s-era building was the home of legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and his wife, Alice, an important jazz musician in her own right. Trane composed some of his most influential works there. In 2007, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places, but by 2012, it was suffering from neglect, damage from Superstorm Sandy, and widespread mold contamination. To help transform it into a museum and music education center worthy of the Coltrane legacy, we performed a condition assessment and provided historic preservation services for structural and envelope restoration.

The Coltrane Home: this ordinary-looking house in the Dix Hills community of Long Island was named a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2018. 28

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

The extensive damage turned out to be a blessing in disguise: the interior finishes and exterior masonry had to be removed, creating the opportunity to pursue the passive house approach. Components of the wall assemblies will be more energyefficient, while their historic appearance will be restored. Inspired by the mission of the Friends of the Coltrane Home and the cultural significance of this property, we provided our services on this project free of charge.

Welcoming New Voices The election of John Abruzzo, Elisabeth Malsch and Peggy Van Eepoel to our board of directors in 2021 opened the next chapter in the board’s succession planning. “Peggy, Elisabeth and John are unquestionably among our highest performers,” says Tom Scarangello, executive chairman. “They’re respected and trusted by clients and colleagues. Their joining our board is a key step so that when anyone looks up, they can see people like themselves in positions of influence. Equally important, I’m confident that more diverse voices will lead to better decisions.” We asked Peggy, John and Elisabeth what in their background or experience has prepared them for this new role.

Victoria Dawe Photography

Peggy: As a mom with young children and a working partner, I appreciate the importance of building an inclusive company that embraces each of us as we are and challenges all of us to grow.

And I bring the perspective of a biracial first-generation American, which enables me to connect with the wide range of people who create, collaborate on and experience our work. Elisabeth: As our organization continues to grow, we’re continually adding new services and seeking clients who value our expertise. Our policies need to be flexible enough to keep up. As the youngest board members, Peggy and I are still very active on engineering projects. This lets us quickly test ideas in the field and bring that understanding back to our fellow board members. John: My interdisciplinary background – in structural, electrical, civil and bioengineering – informs my perspective on what services we can provide and which technologies we can implement and develop. I’ll continue to offer new ideas for expanding our services and our role as a firm. I’m also the other side of the coin from Elisabeth and Peggy: a more senior person in the company, with close to 40 years of experience.

From top: Peggy Van Eepoel, Elisabeth Malsch, John Abruzzo

A Road Map to Greater LGBTQ+ Inclusion In 2021, to fortify our commitment to equity and diversity, we began voluntarily

participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, a national benchmarking tool that rates and reports on corporate policies, practices and benefits related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer workplace inclusion. We’re off to a good start: in our first year of participation, we received a 90 percent rating. And using this year’s score sheet as a road map, we’ll continue working toward a perfect score – and recognition as one of the HRC’s “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality” – in 2023.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion: Creating a Culture of Belonging When we launched our corporate responsibility initiative 10 years ago, one of our goals was to

increase the firm’s gender, ethnic and racial diversity. In 2016, we established an inclusion and diversity committee. Its mission was to build an inclusive environment where people are respected for who they are and free to thrive. By 2020, we realized that our initiative needed to go further, so we reimagined our committee and deepened our mission to include equity. Our three employee network groups (ENGs), Women@TT, Mosaic (focused on multicultural issues) and Spectrum (LGBTQIA+), support our equity, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) goals. As the ENGs mature and grow, they develop more programs to engage and educate us all. Here are some of the events and activities that helped bring us closer to our ED&I goals in 2021.

Jan. 2021 Joined Handshake, a talent-recruiting site. Since joining, we’ve received applications from 160 universities and increased Black hires from 2.8 (in 2018) to 6.9 percent (in 2021) of our total hires. In the same period, we increased Hispanic or Latinx hires from 8.4 to 15.4 percent and women hires from 37.1 to 41.5 percent.

Jan. 2021

Feb. – May 2021

Mar. 8, 2021

May 2021

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mosaic encouraged employees to participate in a day of service. After the holiday, the group hosted a firm-wide virtual discussion of how they volunteered or observed the holiday.

Administered a threepart antiracism course through our learning portal. Approximately 70 percent of our staff participated. Mosaic members facilitated companion discussions to further explore topics introduced in the course.

Celebrated International Women’s Day, with 18 offices participating in virtual events and discussions around the theme #ChooseToChallenge. The events also provided information to help men become better allies.

Mosaic celebrated Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month by launching our Conversations Corner series. This event enabled AAPI-identifying employees to discuss important issues, including discrimination, in the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings the prior month.

Our efforts are paying off, not only by creating a welcoming, lifestyle-friendly workplace, but also by earning industry recognition: Thornton Tomasetti was among nine companies that received the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York’s 2022 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging award in its inaugural year. Learn more about our history of support for equity, diversity and inclusion at TTAnnualReview.com/EDI.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

employees who are women

articipation in ED&I p activities in 2021

Community Craft Culture Climate

31% 80% 36%

REIMAGINING

mployees of nonwhite e ethnicity or race

Left: Employees celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, 2022. Above: In a joint Build Out Alliance-Thornton Tomasetti presentation, architect Jane Greenwood talks about her career, experiences, and what it means to be an out, gay woman in the AEC industry.

June 2021

June 19, 2021

Aug. 26, 2021

Sept. 2021 2021

Spectrum hosted our first virtual Pride walk. By reaching incremental step goals, employees earned badges in the wellness app Walkingspree for each letter of the acronym LGBTQIA+.

Our Talent Team added a selection of pronouns to our internal metrics so employees can easily indicate their gender identity.

For Juneteenth, Mosaic partnered with our green champions to sponsor service activities, including tending an urban garden and helping Meals on Wheels deliver food to elderly and homebound people.

Employees in offices around the world celebrated Women’s Equality Day and kicked off the 101 Miles for 101 Years Walking Challenge, commemorating 101 years of women’s suffrage in the U.S.

The Women@TT one-onone mentoring program, administered through the MentorcliQ app, was adopted firm-wide and opened to all staff.

In 2021, Mosaic hosted in-office parties in New York and San Francisco in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Trust & Partnership: MWBE as It Should Be Many publicly funded projects set levels of participation for

minority- and women-owned business entities (MWBEs), so often there are two consultants engaged for each design discipline. These requirements are sometimes seen as irksome by larger firms, and scope divisions can be unfair, with the MWBE firm being given less interesting pieces of the work. And with two firms instead of one, coordination can suffer.

A+F Engineers Principals Dimitrios Frantzis and Myrofora “Myranda” Anastasi

At its best, though, collaboration between a larger firm and an MWBE can benefit both parties, as well as projects and their stakeholders. Our Washington, D.C., office has partnered with small, woman-owned structural firm A+F Engineers on more than 12 projects over 17 years. Representatives of both recently sat down to discuss their experience together.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship In 2005, Mark and Dimitrios, who was working for another MBE firm, met to collaborate on the structural design for Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. In 2007, as that project was wrapping up, Dimitrios and Myranda founded A+F.

Q: You have a long history together. How did that start? Mark: I remember the first meeting. It was a really fast schedule, so there was concern whether or not each of the parties was going to be able to do their piece. But right off the bat, it was comfortable. We sat down with some 11-by-17 sheets and green and yellow highlighters, and that’s how we figured out who was going to do what.

©Johnny Shryock

Thornton Tomasetti Senior Associate Lisa Chong and Mark Tamaro, Managing Principal and Mid-Atlantic South Region Leader

Dimitrios: We said, “Well, you do this, and we’ll do that,” in a way that made sense, and when we were done, it was proportionally correct to our fees. It was going so well, we even went down to the little details, like who does the scoreboard and the flagpole. Mark: And we never had to talk about it again. It was pretty amazing. Neither of us was going to let the other down.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Q: What makes the relationship work so well? Dimitrios: It clicked from the beginning. After the first discussions with Mark, we knew we were on the same page technically and we felt we could trust each other. Mark: We’ve never had an argument over fees. Dimitrios: And because we had developed this trust and this relationship, we’ve never had a gap between our scopes. Mark: One of the signs of success is when the client doesn’t know which firm you’re from. Lisa: Exactly. It takes extra communication to make that happen, but it pays off. Myranda: To succeed in that, you also need to have the same technical standards, business standards and philosophy. Thornton Tomasetti always fought for fair fees for both firms. Technology is important too. When we started A+F, we invested in compatible software, so we could work easily together. Dimitrios: How the scope is split is also important. Sometimes MWBE firms are given the foundations and that’s it. But we’ve gone back and forth. On one project, we did the superstructure and you did the below-grade work. But on the next project, we switched.

Community Craft Culture Climate

Innovation, Time After Time

Courtesy ZGF

REIMAGINING

In 1915, this Ford Model T assembly plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was at the cutting edge of industry. Now it’s been transformed into The Assembly, a center for life-science research and innovation. With laboratory and office space, event facilities, and retail and dining, the 525,000-square-foot center serves both researchers and members of the surrounding community. The eight-story main building originally housed a showroom and automobile assembly areas. Its 14.5-foot floor-to-floor height and thick floor slabs make it ideal for laboratory use. An adjacent six-story “crane shed,” which was built to lift parts directly from trains into the main building, has been repurposed as a light-filled “collaboration zone,” where researchers can gather to share ideas. A new 190,000-square-foot addition completes the development. The adaptive-reuse project, designed by ZGF Architects, preserves the character of the original plant, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018, while making it attractive to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who will share the space with the biomedical start-ups that lease labs and offices.

Q: What’s the most interesting scope split you’ve done?

Q: All projects have bumps in the road. How do you deal with that?

Lisa: The Assembly in Pittsburgh (above). A+F owned the roof, and we owned the walls, so it was very interesting.

Dimitrios: Our relationship got tested many times, and we proved that we are there for each other.

Dimitrios: Right.

Myranda: And defending each other, not trying to push the blame to the other party.

Lisa: It’s a really cool building. It has a massive open space where trains could drive in. The first time I went on-site, though, that part was in bad shape, and I thought, “How is this thing still standing?” That was when they asked if we could bring in any small-business participation. It seemed like an easy thing to carve off, but we knew it would be incredibly complicated. Dimitrios: The scope was all integrated. Lisa: And when A+F did the peer review for the remainder of the building, it felt like an internal quality-control review. It was not adversarial at all.

Mark: A lot of people like to be able to say, “Oh, that’s their problem.” We’ve been so intertwined, because many of the projects have been single buildings, that we couldn’t do that, even if we wanted to. We just needed to work together and solve the problem. We go after complex buildings, and that’s another thing we have in common. We both like the technical challenges. That’s what makes it exciting. Q: How does this long-term relationship benefit both firms? Myranda: As a young company, the partnership helped us win large,

interesting projects that we couldn’t get by ourselves. That was very important. And now it helps us keep our employees, because they get to do technically challenging work. Dimitrios: It also kept us going. There were periods when all we had in the office were projects we were working on together. And we built a strong portfolio, which helps when we go after new projects, alone or as a team. Mark: For us, the most significant benefit is the incredible confidence we have in the team, so we can be aggressive in going after complex projects and good fees. You don’t get that with one-off relationships. That portfolio we have together helps us win projects. We actively look for projects to work on together, knowing it’ll strengthen those benefits. Myranda: We’ve also gone to our clients and said, “If you want a national firm to team with us, this is the one.” We always feel comfortable doing this. Q: Any advice for how others can build similar relationships? Mark: When you find a good partner, latch onto them and don’t let go. Then you build on that, because you build momentum. Every project you do together increases that bond and that strength. Lisa: It makes you more marketable, because people don’t want you jammed together for just one project. They want to see that relationship, that you’ve worked successfully in the past. Dimitrios: Yes. We’ve had 17 exciting years, both technically and personally. We have cemented friendships, and we love that, and we’re looking forward to more to come.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

2022 Purpose & Values Awards

or our eighth annual Purpose and Values Awards, our employees nominated colleagues from 15 offices. Here are this year’s winners, along with excerpts from their nomination letters.

Purpose We Embrace Challenges

Value We Challenge People to Grow

Steve Hofmeister Managing Principal and Structures Practice Co-Lead, Kansas City

Chris Christoforou Principal Newark

“ Steve’s ability to demonstrate collaboration and caring for people is vast. He approaches conversations with an open mind and an ear to listen and understand. This allows him to find common ground and build relationships with just about anyone. He always remembers the important things – and uses them to build lasting relationships – which is really what most of what we do is built upon.” – Scott Lomax, Scott Schneider, Elisabeth Malsch and Theresa Curtis

“ If we ever had an engineering boot camp, our wish is that it would be six intensive weeks working for Chris. He’s like that stern elementary school teacher who you know has your best interest at heart, doesn’t let you get away with anything, holds you to a high standard, and who you’re a little bit afraid of. He’s tough in the best way possible. ‘We have to be right,’ Chris would say. ‘We have to get an A+. There is no B+.’” – Andrew Blasetti, Brad Malmsten, Andrew Beckmann, Dave Fusco and Mark Andrews

Rupa Patel Senior Associate Washington, D.C. “ As the D.C. office’s Forensics practice leader, Rupa embodies how we challenge ourselves and everyone around us to grow. Her passion and excitement to achieve and exceed goals influences all around her. While she has been with the firm only six years, she has made an outsize contribution because she is constantly pushing the limits of people’s expectations of what is possible for her and for themselves.” – Helen Whalen and Ting-Wen Wang

This grassroots program encourages our people to recognize excellence in one another. Any employee can nominate any colleague, and the prior year’s winners serve as the current year’s judges.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

Value We See Opportunities

REIMAGINING

Shawn Leary Principal Boston “ Shawn lives for embracing challenges, often ones others might shy away from, to help his clients be successful. He is always willing to share his vast experience with others and patiently mentors staff at all levels, no matter how many deadlines he is juggling. Shawn also recognizes that cooperation leads to opportunity and better engineering. He’s always about getting the job done in the best way possible.” – Brent Vollenweider and Lisa Davey

Magdalena Patrus Senior Engineer London “ One example of Magdalena’s seeing opportunity: During the COVID lockdown, we couldn’t travel from London to a factory in the Czech Republic to resolve issues on a project. She was stranded in her native Poland, so she rented a car and drove 900 kilometers to carry out the factory inspections. This was before vaccines, when crossing a border risked quarantining and rule changes with little notice. She did this twice.” – Claudia Farabegoli

Value We Look Beyond

Value We Are Passionate

Gwen Dowdy Senior Talent Operations Coordinator New York

Elcin Ertugrul Associate Applications Developer New York

“ 2021 was an exceptional year for Gwen, the HR group’s frontline point of contact for the COVID pandemic. She responded thoughtfully and compassionately to hundreds of our employees as COVID impacted their lives. When Omicron hit over the holidays, her level of service only increased. When we had an unprecedented number of cases, she sacrificed time with her family to support all of us at any hour of the day or night.”

Purpose We embrace challenges to make lasting contributions. Values

We challenge people to grow.

We see opportunities where others focus on risk. We look beyond the obvious to solve the real problem. We are passionate about what we do.

“ We have a lot of passionate people at Thornton Tomasetti, but Elcin, who leads software development for CORE, goes a step beyond our baseline. I call her a ‘power employee.’ Maybe the best way to describe her passion is that she doesn’t have a ‘good enough’ setting. Everything she does has to be the right thing, done the right way – no shortcuts, no fudge factor, nothing less than correct.” – Rob Otani and Ben Howes

– Dan Stauthamer Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Our Culture Is Caring: Community Service & Charitable Donations In 2021, Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., gave

$2.7 M

$305,129 to charitable, educational and service organizations. Donations by our local offices represented 17 percent of our contributions, supporting causes like the March of Dimes, the Alzheimer’s Association, United Way and the American Cancer Society. Total donations grew by 56 percent over the previous year, approaching prepandemic levels. Each year, we also fund two memorial scholarships for students at the City College of New York’s Grove School of Engineering.

in charitable giving since 2013

56% increase in charitable contributions between 2021 and 2020

33%

Our Volunteer Days benefit – part of the Thornton Tomasetti Gives Back program – pays staff to engage in community-service activities like soup

of total giving went to the Thornton Tomasetti Foundation

kitchens and beach cleanups. Since the program’s 2014 launch, it has resulted in more than 12,000 hours of service. The program also compensates employees for half the hours they spend mentoring schoolchildren in the ACE Mentor Program of America. In 2021, 90 employees in 18 U.S. locations logged 906 hours of service with ACE. While our work with Bridges to Prosperity, building pedestrian bridges that link isolated communities to vital resources, was suspended due to travel restrictions, in 2021 we sponsored the organization’s virtual year-end campaign, the Thornton Tomasetti Third Bridge Challenge. We’re now planning a 2023 bridge build in Rwanda.

Thornton Tomasetti Foundation

Courtesy Engineers in Action, USI Chapter

Our independent 501(c)(3) organization funds scholarships and fellowships for graduate and undergraduate students in building engineering, design and technology. It also supports people and organizations pursuing philanthropic activities in these areas. In 2021, the foundation granted $162,250 in scholarships and charitable contributions, including $41,250 to six college students through its Thornton Tomasetti Foundation National Scholarship program, Student Innovation Fellowship and Technical Literacy Fellowship. Other organizations that have received funds include Engineers in Action, the Marconi Society, Urban Assembly School, Geohazards International and Archive Global. Since its inception in 2008, the foundation has distributed $1,460,950 in grants and scholarships. ThorntonTomasettiFoundation.org

The University of Southern Indiana chapter of Engineers in Action helped construct the new Nichols Vehicular Bridge to replace a flooddamaged crossing over the Mud Fork River in Spencer, West Virginia.

Board of Governors Richard L. Tomasetti, Chairman Raymond Daddazio, Vice Chairman Andrew Goldbaum, Treasurer Elisabeth Malsch, Secretary Joseph G. Burns Wayne Stocks Robert J. Nacheman

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Activities Committee Elaine Shapiro Amy Macdonald Peter Quigley Foundation Administrator Gwendolyn Dowdy

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

Courtesy Heather Whitaker

Employees from our Portland, Maine, office used their Volunteer Days hours to help harvest 160 pounds of produce from the Gorham Middle School garden for donation to Gorham Food Pantry Friends.

Corporate Responsibility: Internalizing ESG We’ve been committed to corporate responsibility and transparency in disclosing 20%

15+

ENVIRONMEN

50%

increase in sustainability projects with carbon-neutral goal

25%

reduction in embodied carbon in structural frames

2025

AT SI

reduction in CO 2 e in sustainability projects

40%

202

DEMONSTR

IMPACT

of R&D supports environmental & social outcomes

communities increase resilience

our environmental and social impacts – both positive and negative – since 2013, when we released our first sustainability report. As one of the earliest AEC firms to establish a corporate sustainability department, we initially devised our own reporting standard, with the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) as our guide. But as measures of sustainability have gained in importance, a standard approach has arisen to enable investors to compare “apples to apples” when deciding where to place socially responsible investments.

Our five targets for one of the seven corporate responsibility goals that guide our ESG approach.

That standard approach – ESG – includes three categories critical to sustainable investing: environmental, social, and governance. Within each category are related subcategories, such as pollution, waste, human rights and board composition. GRI reporting is the process of collecting and disclosing ESG information according to the Global Reporting Initiative created by the Global Sustainability Standards Board. Introduced in 1997, the GRI is an independent international standard that helps firms report on ESG consistently and clearly. While applying ESG standards is a relatively new practice for our industry, this year we’re expanding our triple-bottom-line approach by voluntarily reporting in reference to the Global Reporting Initiative. We’re also looking at how our work can align with the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. More information – including our 2021 GRI disclosures – will be published at ThorntonTomasetti.com /Corporate-Responsibility-Report. Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Reimagining Climate

he past two years have laid bare the challenges of a truly worldwide crisis. How can we apply what we’ve learned to address another global problem of our time: the devastating effects of unchecked climate change? Reimagining ways to apply science-based approaches can help us limit the pace, effects and costs – human, environmental and economic – of a changing climate.

Embodied Carbon: New Tools, New Targets Spurred by the Carbon Leadership Forum’s (CLF) Structural

Engineers 2050 Challenge, more companies are recognizing the importance of minimizing embodied carbon (EC). Following years of carbon-related R&D, we worked with CLF and others to conceive and develop the challenge, which calls on structural engineers to “understand, reduce and ultimately eliminate embodied carbon in their projects by 2050.” Our CORE studio developed software for the database used by the Structural Engineering Institute to track and report on EC for its SE 2050 Commitment program, which it created in response to the challenge. In 2021, as part of that commitment, we formalized an Embodied Carbon Action Plan (ECAP), laying out our EC targets in four areas: education, reporting, reduction strategies and advocacy.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Much of our focus over the past year has been on ensuring that everyone in the firm understands why embodied carbon is important, how to measure and address it, and how to discuss it with clients. Our EC community of practice hosted a firm-wide embodied-carbon summit in April 2021. We also formulated new concrete and steel specifications for EC and introduced a monthly “EC Shorts” program, in which an employee talks briefly to colleagues about work, strategies, materials or applications related to EC reduction. Tools in Development Our CORE studio, which has created applications – like Beacon – that track embodied carbon in building projects, is developing new tools that will perform a variety of tasks, including design for composite and concrete beams; steel and concrete columns; and timber bays, beams and columns. These tools will automatically update EC estimates when a user alters any component of a model.

Our 2021 ECAP was our first disclosure as a member of the SE 2050 Commitment (visit SE2050.org/Signatory-Firms; click “2021 Submitted”). Employees from across the firm collaborated to develop the plan, which built on our previous work to meet our corporate embodied-carbon leadership goals and outlines 13 measurable targets, including:

100% of our structural engineers will know our embodied-carbon reduction capabilities by 2023

25% reduction in average embodied carbon for structural frames from our 2019 benchmark by 2025

“ Because the building sector generates up to 40 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, our role in combating climate change goes beyond sustainability consulting: we calculate and help reduce embodied carbon – the carbon footprint of building materials – in the buildings we design.” – Scott Schneider, Principal

40% reduction in average embodied carbon for structural frames from our 2019 benchmark by 2030

A structural machine-learning design and embodied carbon takeoff for a tower created in Swarm Asterisk.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Decarbonizing the Power Industry Fighting climate change is a battle

we’re waging on many fronts – from energy generation, storage and use to design and operation of the built environment. Decarbonizing heavy industry, especially the power sector – which produces about a quarter of humangenerated greenhouse gases – is one focus of our work on decarbonization and non-carbon energy technologies. As utilities replace conventional power plants with renewables or upgrade them to clean energy options, we help by performing advanced modeling to determine the best and safest ways to demolish outdated facilities. Sometimes deconstruction is necessary for safety;

at other times a designed implosion is optimal. We’re modeling the demolition of two coal-fired units in Asheville, North Carolina, to make way for solar power generation and energy storage facilities.

the client to safely certify multiple design options without having to test every design iteration, saving time and expense. Ultimately, our assessment will help optimize container design, manufacturing and arrangement.

Long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and waste is an ongoing global challenge. We’re developing new technologies for better waste management. For one client in the U.K., we’re applying skills in thermal, chemical and structural mechanics – honed by serving military clients – to develop computational models to verify waste container safety (right). The models will allow

We’re also modeling spent-fuel storage options for micromodular nuclear reactors. These reactors – typically rated at 10 to 500 megawatts – are much smaller than conventional reactors and often replace coal- or diesel-fired plants that are far from any electricity grid. Thanks to their modular construction, they can be built quickly and for about a quarter of the cost of conventional reactors. Their different fuel design is

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

At the 47-acre Commonwealth Fusion Systems site in Devens, Massachusetts, SPARC, a compact fusion device, will be housed in the gray facility (center), scheduled for completion in 2025. Our services for architect HDR include structural engineering and mass-concrete thermal modeling. We’re also providing contractor support services for Bond, the general contractor.

Courtesy CFS

REIMAGINING

one factor that makes them safer to operate, but their spent fuel still requires a safe storage option. We’re also working with developers of fusion reactors in the U.S. and U.K., building computer simulations to assess the production rate of tritium, which fuels the fusion reaction. These models are advancing the safety and efficiency of real-time tritium production, and will help optimize the design of fusion reactors. And we’re providing a wide range of engineering services for fusionpower pioneer Commonwealth Fusion Systems (above).

BEFORE

AFTER

Renderings based on results from our predictive modeling conducted to assess the safety and integrity of nuclear waste containers subjected to extreme loading. In this example, which was validated experimentally, our model predicted that the housing would not be breached, despite damage to the interior container.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Floored by New Timber-Composite Hybrid System’s Embodied-Carbon Savings Floor slabs are one of the biggest sources of a building’s

embodied carbon, so a new system developed in our London office has the potential to deliver sizable reductions. A flooring system of precast concrete slabs on steel beams has been popular in the U.K. for at least a decade. It creates long spans for open-plan spaces and provides a high-quality exposed soffit (the slab’s underside), so suspended ceilings, which can reduce headroom, aren’t needed. Designers have recently begun to replace concrete with cross-laminated-timber (CLT) slabs in some applications. This mass-timber alternative can be environmentally and aesthetically preferable to precast slabs, but CLT alone can’t span as far. It also doesn’t insulate as well against sound, so a screed layer that increases floor thickness is often necessary.

Enter our new timber-composite hybrid system, developed in collaboration with CLT design and manufacturing specialist KLH and steel fabricator Kloeckner Westok. It adds a thin layer of high-cement-replacement concrete on top of the CLT slab. Grooves in the timber lock it together with the top layer for composite performance, which provides span-length and acoustic dampening equivalent to precast slabs, but with just a fraction of the embodied carbon. The hybrid system is also lighter, so steel framing tonnage can be reduced by half. We used a model of a real 13-story building to test the new system. The embodied-carbon results for the structure were dramatic: an 88 percent savings against current sequesteredcarbon targets for the U.K. set by the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI).

High-cement-replacement concrete cast into CLT

Column tie

CLT routed with grooves for composite action

Structural depth of only 820 mm (32.3 in.)

Steel beam with shear studs

“ Our system provides the aesthetic and embodied-carbon benefits of a timber-and-steel hybrid while enabling longer-span spaces, without increasing costs.” – Eddie Jump, Technical Director

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

A conventional precast concrete-slab-and-steel system can span 9-by-15-meter bays. CLT-and-steel systems currently in use are limited to shorter spans unless thickness is increased. Timbercomposite hybrid slabs can span a full 9-by-15 meters with a thickness of only 300 millimeters.

Community Craft Culture Climate

Campus Sustainability Is Making the Grade

REIMAGINING

Universities and colleges are leading the way on sustainability. We asked clients on two recent projects

Courtesy Goody, Clancy & Associates, Inc.

about their approach to making spaces that are healthy for their occupants and the planet.

Our work on Bond House, a new 313-bed residence hall at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, included sustainability consulting and structural design. Our team performed a series of parametric energy-modeling studies to help fine-tune the building’s exterior shading system to the sun’s orientation.

We provided sustainability consulting for Colby College’s new Harold Alfond Athletics and Recreation Center in Waterville, Maine. The 350,000-square-foot complex earned LEED Platinum and SITES Gold certifications in 2022.

Priorities for improving sustainability on campus:

Obstacles to making campuses more sustainable and resilient:

“ We plan to reach carbon neutrality by the end of the decade and become a fossil-fuel-free campus by mid-century. We’re also striving to incorporate sustainability into teaching and research while leveraging the campus as a learning lab.”

“ Land is seen as having more value when ‘developed’ for human use, despite a loss of ecological systems. During development, materials are still selected for lower first costs, rather than overall value for environmental and human health.”

– E than Heil, P.E., LEED AP, WELL AP, Sustainability and Energy Engineer, University of Virginia

– M inakshi M. Amundsen, Assistant Vice President, Facilities and Campus Planning, Colby College

Resilient Campuses

In addition to helping higher-education clients develop sustainable buildings, we’re also working to make campuses more resilient. We are providing structural engineering, multihazard climate risk assessment, and resilience consulting and design for a new athletic center on a waterfront campus site. To enhance the facility’s long-term resilience, the design incorporates considerations of climate risks, including coastal and tidal flooding, heavy rainfall, extreme heat, high winds, and severe winter weather.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Courtesy Atelier Sergio Rebelo

Quinta de Santo Antonio Hotel & Winery: A Meeting of Past & Future

Community Craft Culture Climate

Wood is one of the world’s oldest building materials, but now – in the form of mass timber – it’s also a sustainable material for the future. A new winery and hotel in Portugal’s historic Alto Douro wine region is bringing wood back to the present.

REIMAGINING

We’re providing structural design and sustainability services for a new hospitality complex, which is being built on a UNESCO World Heritage site. The design by Atelier Sérgio Rebelo harmonizes with the landscape, a valley along the Douro River, where terraced vineyards produce the region’s famed Port wines. The 9,700-square-foot winery features sinuous lines that mirror the curving terraces, while the 34,500square-foot hotel is divided into several smaller buildings around a courtyard – an arrangement that echoes the region’s age-old monasteries. The use of natural materials, including exposed heavy timber columns, rafters and trusses, further integrates the complex into the hillside. Our team is applying experience in a variety of mass-timber applications – including the recently topped-out Ascent, which will be the tallest mass-timber building in the world – to develop an elegant and efficient structural design for the project. These timber elements also make the structures more sustainable. Our structural engineers are collaborating with our sustainability experts to create an environmentally friendly development. Selection of materials and construction systems was guided by a close study of local architecture and a desire to use regionally sourced natural materials.

When it opens in 2024, the new Portuguese winery will carry on a 2,000-year winemaking tradition in a strikingly modern setting. The design won a 2021 World Architecture Festival Future Projects award.

Courtesy Atelier Sergio Rebelo

We also studied the local climate to engineer energy-saving solutions that will help reach the owner’s goal of net-zero emissions from annual operations at the complex. We took advantage of the region’s superb weather for natural ventilation, dramatic daylighting and solar energy generation, further integrating the complex into its surroundings. Any additional heating and cooling needs will be met by a geothermal system.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Our Carbon Footprint

29%

2.32

130

decrease in average per capita CO2e emissions since 2018

2021 updated per capita carbon footprint, in metric tons of CO2e

U.S. household equivalent CO2e emissions offset since 2012

We make progress toward these targets by working in high-performance offices (many of which we designed), using renewable energy, flying less often and offsetting emissions from necessary travel, and providing employees with flexible work options that reduce emissions related to commuting while maintaining our collaborative culture.

and we’ve readjusted our baseline year following a merger in late 2015. Since 2018, we’ve achieved a 29 percent reduction in our average per capita emissions and are making steady progress toward our reduction targets for carbon neutrality in 2030. Our challenge now is to maintain the low emissions levels we’ve seen throughout the pandemic as people return to the office and engage in more business-related travel.

In 2012, we established our goal of

achieving carbon-neutral business operations by 2030. Since then, we’ve been reaching our interim targets by reducing energy use wherever possible and offsetting travel emissions. And though our largest impacts on climate change are from our services, we’re aware that the carbon footprint of our operations is significant as well. So we’ve set reduction targets to help us reach carbon neutrality:

10% reduction in per capita emissions every other year

50% reduction in per capita emissions from 2018 levels by 2030

<20% limit in firm-wide carbon-footprint increase from 2018 through 2030, before offsets, despite company growth

In 2021, COVID continued to affect our operations in ways that lowered our carbon footprint. At 531 metric tons of CO2e, our 2021 emissions from air and train travel were about one-third less than those of 2019. Our latest biennial analysis, for 2020, showed that we met our carbon-footprint reduction target of 10 percent per capita from the previous year (before offsets), achieving a per capita footprint of 2.73 metric tons of CO2e. Carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates for electricity use brought that down to 2.33 metric tons, with a total reduction of 478 metric tons of CO2e achieved through these methods. Since 2014, we’ve used carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates to neutralize 5,198 metric tons of CO2e. Since we started measuring our carbon footprint in 2012, we’ve learned much about what’s possible,

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

For Daylight Hour, a social media campaign organized by the Building Energy Exchange, we turn off the lights in our offices to show our commitment to energy reduction. This image, designed by Lorenzo Sanjuan, was among the many items employees created and posted to celebrate the event.

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

We designed a solar-powered electric vehicle charging station at Northerly Island, Chicago, Illinois. Green power is also part of our strategy for achieving carbon-neutral business operations by 2030.

Our Green Offices

11 green-building certified or registered office fit-outs

49% employees in green-building certified or registered offices

140 environmental and social grants to offices since 2013

As part of our pursuit of carbon-neutral operations, we design new offices and major renovations according to green-building principles and implement energy-efficiency upgrades to existing offices. Ten have received green-building certification, and one more is registered for certification. In 2021, our New York office became our first to receive a WELL Health-Safety Rating. And in 2022, we expect to earn our first Living Building Challenge petal certification for our Denver office. Our green champions help local offices meet energy-efficiency and emissionsreduction goals and other environmental and social objectives. In 2021, we awarded 28 grants to support the work of our local corporate-responsibility champions in 25 locations. Since 2013, the firm has awarded $282,000 in grants for socially and environmentally friendly upgrades.

Our 5,500-square-foot Denver office is designed to achieve the Materials, Beauty and Place petals of the Living Building Challenge.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Community Craft Culture Climate

REIMAGINING

e all stand together at a crossroads that demands the highest powers of imagination. We live in unstable times – for Earth’s climate, for public health, for supply chains, for political discourse and turmoil, and for the meaning and purpose of work. In reimagining community, craft, culture and climate, there is no shortage of work to do.

Thornton Tomasetti 2021/2022 Annual Review

Design by Barber Graphic Design

We can’t know what a new normal will look like. But we can be certain it will be invented by inquisitive, passionate and creative people working together, asking “what if . . . ?” and answering “here’s how.”

Courtesy Sterling Bay/Gensler Photos on p. 5, 24, 29 and 31 (bottom left) by Bess Adler. Photo on p. 31 (top left) by Lorenzo Sanjuan. All uncredited images ©Thornton Tomasetti.

When it opens in early 2023, the eight-story ALLY at 1229 West Concord Place will help Chicago compete in the booming life-sciences sector. Part of Sterling Bay’s massive $6 billion Lincoln Yards development, ALLY will be a research hub for leading-edge biotechnology companies. Our design uses highly efficient post-tensioned reinforced concrete to meet exacting laboratory vibration requirements. “This is place-making on a grand scale,” says John Peronto, who is leading our work on four Lincoln Yards projects. “Our intent is to transform Chicago to compete with biotech R&D in Boston or the Bay Area.”

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We apply scientific and engineering principles to solve the world’s challenges – starting with yours. Whether we’re focused on the design, construction and performance of buildings or expanding into new disciplines, we never limit ourselves, applying our expertise to projects of every type, size and level of complexity. How can we help you? We offer solutions for an ever-widening range of industries and clients.