2016/2017 Annual Report
What kinds of diversity nurture success?
“ Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.” – Malcolm Forbes
Contents
Page 26 CORE
Page 27 TTWiiN Technology Accelerator
Page 2 Executive Message
Page 4 Kinds of Diversity
Page 6 Case Studies 1–3
Page 28 Purpose & Values Awards Thornton Tomasetti provides engineering design, investigation and analysis services to clients worldwide on projects of every size and level of complexity.
Page 12 How Does Diversity Nurture Success?
Page 16 Case Studies 4–7
We are a 100 percent employee-owned organization of engineers, architects, and sustainability and support professionals collaborating from offices across North America and in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. We focus on providing a diverse suite of integrated services and leading innovation in our industry to ensure the continued success of our clients.
Page 29 Sustainability Highlights
Page 30 Thornton Tomasetti Foundation
Page 31 Board of Directors & Officers
Page 32 Our Practices
Executive Message
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t Thornton Tomasetti, when we talk about diversity, we’re thinking beyond diversity in our firm. Instead, we’re thinking about the diversity of our firm: our ambition is to achieve a broad “diversity of diversity.” Of course, it includes gender, culture, ethnicity and other attributes, but also acquired characteristics such as expertise, experience and education. And the firm’s many disciplines, services and geographies are another type of diversity. What is the value in pursuing our broad diversity? To borrow a biological term, the answer is mutualism: an association between two or more species, from which each benefits. Together, we become more responsive and resilient. When we add expertise or services, we don’t do it for the sake of getting bigger. We do it because each service complements the others, making all of them them stronger and more valuable to our clients. When members of our technical staff rotate through different practices, they bring
a richer experience to each one they join. The same holds true for geography: when an engineer from Los Angeles spends a year living and working in Abu Dhabi or Christchurch, she or he gains a broader understanding of our business from diverse perspectives. Mixing it up this way creates an environment where new ideas thrive and helps us drive change and innovation in our industry. This year, we undertook several efforts to evaluate, cultivate and expand upon these diversities. Evaluate Just as diverse ideas fuel innovation, so does creating an environment of openness. Over the past year, we each traveled more than 150,000 miles, visiting clients and engaging staff in town hall meetings. We listened and took notes. Our goal was to include everyone’s voice. The feedback we collected from each visit is helping shape our priorities and initiatives. Cultivate One year into the Weidlinger–Thornton Tomasetti merger, the accelerating growth of our portfolio underscored the need to better connect our people across disciplines, offices and time zones. We went from 900 people to 1,200, from seven practices to 10 and from 26 offices to more than 40. We needed better ways to include everyone in sharing, discovering, refining and archiving our knowledge.
Tom Scarangello and Ray Daddazio
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To help achieve this, we brought two tools on line in 2016. We launched Spark, a new interactive intranet that uses familiar social media functionalities to encourage grassroots participation and control over content. Now our people in London, for example, can collaborate more seamlessly with colleagues in Seattle or Mumbai. It is already becoming a powerful tool for building both know-how and “know-who.� We also started a firmwide communities of practice (CoP) initiative, which uses the Spark platform to encourage collaboration among people with similar interests and expertise. We surveyed our staff to determine leading areas of interest and in November launched our inaugural 15 CoPs – focused on topics as diverse as urban resilience, finite element modeling and analysis, long-span structures and physical security (see page 20). More CoPs will start up in 2017. In 2016, our board of directors established I+D2, a diversity and inclusion committee with the mission of examining short-, medium- and long-range tactics to enhance workforce diversity and inclusion (see page 21).
Our innovation accelerator, TTWiiN, is now fully operational, with independent leadership. TTWiiN takes internally incubated innovation derived from our businesses and prepares it for commercial spinoff. To date, five companies have been stood up and are starting to serve clients (see page 27).
This report highlights some cases where diverse project teams achieved exemplary results, and includes a panel discussion that examines how diversity affects organizational performance and resilience. We invite you to share your experiences and ideas to help us all move forward.
Tom Scarangello Chairman & CEO
Ray Daddazio President
Diversify Early this year, we acquired Toronto-based Swallow Acoustic Consultants, adding consulting in acoustics, noise and vibration control to our platform (see page 16). Our collaboration with Swallow goes back decades, and we are excited to expand our Canadian presence and integrate these services into our practices. Swallow provides excellent synergies for our 10 practices as well as our CORE R&D efforts.
Thanks, Bob
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ne aspect of diversity and inclusion is making room for the contributions of our most experienced retirees. In that spirit, we salute the retirement this year of Bob DeScenza, former president of the firm, after 37 years of service. As a guiding light for an entire generation at the firm, Bob embodies clear and disciplined thinking, dedication to getting things right, generosity, and a gentle but firm guiding hand. We are delighted that he has agreed to continue as a board advisor so the current generation can benefit from his broad view and expertise.
Bob DeScenza with Vice President Michele Becker
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Different perspectives make an organization more innovative and resilient. Geographic diversity of operations teaches us best practices from around the world and enables us to better weather regional business cycles. The firm’s ever-evolving suite of services, offered through our 10 integrated practices, results from and exemplifies the “diversity of diversity� to which we aspire. Through them, we work to create an environment where experts in many fields work together to develop solutions that are greater than the sum of their parts.
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“ To build teams capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity… simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think.” -- Katherine Phillips Columbia Business School
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The likelihood that companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity financially outperform those in the bottom quartile. – McKinsey & Company
“ The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.” – R. A. Fisher Biologist and Statistician
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Team Developer: Greenland Group Design Architect: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture Architect of Record: East China Architectural Design and Research Institute
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ur structural engineers, façade consultants and construction-engineering specialists collaborated closely with project team members in cities across the United States and China to deliver an efficient and constructable design for the glass-clad Wuhan Greenland Center, a slender, cigar-shaped tower. Upon its 2018 completion, the 636-meter-tall building will be the tallest in China and the third tallest in the world. Our understanding of local building codes – honed through the design of more than 23 towers in China – as well as our fluency in the language (and its many dialects) and wide-ranging experience with tall buildings in the U.S., Europe and Asia, were crucial assets. They enabled our engineers to demonstrate to the Chinese seismic-expert review panel that, in certain cases, less stringent, more economical design criteria could better support the project’s architectural intent and still fulfill safety requirements.
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With stakeholders in New York, Chicago, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing and the project site in Wuhan, coordination across time zones was a major challenge for the team. A variety of methods – including teleconferencing, file sharing, email and WeChat (a cross-platform social media application popular in China) – expedited collaboration and minimized travel costs. To turn the 12- to 13-hour time difference between New York and China to the client’s advantage, we employed an on-call representative in Shanghai to field questions around the clock. Issues requiring intensive review were relayed to our New York team, which performed the requisite analysis overnight. This simple solution enabled stakeholders to receive answers within 12 – rather than 24 – hours.
Iris Gan Technical Design Director, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture Now calls Chicago home, and has lived or worked in China, Canada and the UAE. • Earned a B.E. degree in architecture in her hometown at Beijing Architecture and Civil Engineering University. • Went all the way to Muncie, Indiana, for her M.Arch. degree at Ball State. • Has worked on many tall buildings, including Jin Mao Tower and Chengdu Greenland Tower (for which we are the structural engineer). • Thinks Hong Kong is the world’s most exciting city architecturally, because it is “forever evolving with the emerging culture from around the world.”
Dennis Poon Principal Structural Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti Believes he embodies the American dream, having grown up in Hong Kong, attended college in the U.S. and risen to become the firm’s vice chairman. • Has worked on every continent but Antarctica and has designed more than a dozen buildings over 100 stories tall. • In 1977, while working at a Chinese restaurant to pay his college tuition, he met Founding Principal Charlie Thornton. • Values a diversified team because “when everyone has a different cultural background and education, they bring a greater depth of thinking to every problem.”
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Location Wuhan, China
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Case Study 1
Wuhan Greenland Center: Collaborating Across Time, Space and Disciplines
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ZhaoHui Jia Chief Architect, Greenland Group Grew up in Tonghua, a small industrial city in China’s Jilin province. • Earned an M.Arch. degree from Harbin University of Technology in Shenzhen, China, 1,900 miles from his hometown, and an EMBA degree from Fudan University in Shanghai. • Manages his firm’s Supertall Buildings department, specializing in real estate, and is in charge of more than 10 world-class high-rise buildings over 300 meters tall. • Counts Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, as the book that has most influenced his thinking.
Courtesy Greenland Group
Courtesy Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Alloy Kemp Façade Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti Enjoys façade design because it engages her training in both engineering and architecture. • Helped the firm’s Façade Engineering practice quintuple in size over the past seven years. • Has worked on projects in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, China, Russia, Azerbaijan and South Korea. • Likes projects of various sizes, since “megaprojects are interesting and stimulating, but smaller projects can often be more rewarding.” • Enjoys skiing and snowboarding (especially in Jackson Hole, Wyoming) and is learning to play the ukulele.
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Case Study 2
Resiliency Planning Reduces Risk at New York City Medical Center “ For this project, our different backgrounds and perspectives on the same problem provide a holistic view of resiliency. You can’t solve this with a single discipline.”
Amy Macdonald Vice President, Thornton Tomasetti – Project Manager for Risk and Resiliency Moved to New York City after growing up in Wellington, New Zealand, and living in Australia. • Completed undergraduate studies in civil engineering, geology and environmental science at the University of Canterbury and earned a master’s degree in engineering management from the University of Auckland. Her work in resiliency draws on all of these studies. • Loves to ski, especially fresh powder in remote locations, like the Kashmiri Himalayas. • Influenced by her father and brother – both software engineers – to use technology to improve data visualization, analysis and client communication.
– Amy Macdonald
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fter flooding from Sandy in 2012 closed patient wards and caused extensive damage at a medical center, our Property Loss Consulting practice was hired to provide multidisciplinary expertise for a plan to enable the campus to better withstand future events.
“We help our clients understand the risks associated with natural hazards and what the consequences would be, then we help them weigh different mitigation options,” says project leader Amy Macdonald. “If a hospital is damaged, people can’t get help in a time of need. I enjoy my job because I think it can make a difference in people’s lives.” 8
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Courtesy FEMA
Our structural engineers, forensic architects, waterproofing specialists and BIM modelers – working with Jaros, Baum & Bolles, the owner’s preferred MEP engineer – have provided a variety of resilience-focused services, including a multihazard risk assessment that studied vulnerabilities to flood, earthquake and wind hazards. We also developed recommendations for immediate emergency action plans and designed longer-term mitigation measures to improve resiliency. Disaster recovery often stops at bringing things back to the way they were. Adding resiliency is about building in extra capacity and redundancy so the building, campus or community can survive – and even thrive – in the face of challenges.
FEMA New York City preliminary flood insurance rate map.
“ Columbia’s engineering program emphasizes the wider social impact of what we do. Resiliencyrelated engineering is about how we can build a stronger community – not just stronger buildings.” – Jennifer Mahan
Joe Guerrero Electrical Associate, Jaros, Baum & Bolles – Electrical Engineering Project Manager Prefers interacting with people to sitting behind a desk. • The son of a Filipino immigrant, he thinks greater diversity in AEC leadership would inspire more women and minorities to pursue executive roles. • Barcelona, Spain, is his favorite city – “until I discover all the ones I haven’t been to yet.” • An amateur filmmaker, he hopes to someday enter a short film into a festival. • Loves classic science fiction. His favorite book is Ender’s Game. • Sums up his work ethic with a Steve Jobs quote: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
Claudine Williams Associate, Thornton Tomasetti – Project Architect A registered architect with 15 years of experience, Claudine relishes the variety of working on investigations, renovations, façade repairs, litigation support and reconstruction projects. • Born in Jamaica, she moved with her family to Brooklyn (where she still lives) when she was 7 years old. • Bakes for relaxation and loves to experiment with scone and cookie recipes. Her favorite? Orange-chocolate-chip biscotti. • Enjoys the challenge of designing flood mitigation measures that are aesthetically pleasing as well as effective.
Jennifer Mahan Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – Structural Investigation and Design Enjoys the diverse challenges found in forensic structural engineering. • Earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering – with a minor in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies – from Columbia University. Headed to Berkeley, California, for her master’s degree. • Working with Engineers Without Borders, helped design and build a bridge in a Moroccan village. • Searches out the best ice cream shops in every city she visits. • Her motto: “Always ask. You never know what might happen.”
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ne of the benefits of the diverse skill sets found among our employees is the potential for innovation. When one person’s expertise generates an idea, colleagues have the ability to turn it into a practical reality. This kind of diversity recently bore fruit in the development of FacilityBlast VCE, a software tool based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), that makes it much easier to accurately assess the hazards and consequences of vapor-cloud explosion (VCE) accidents at petrochemical facilities. Because VCEs can cause significant damage – and cost lives – accurate prediction of the blast loads they cause is critical. But VCEs are much more complex than detonations caused by solid explosives, so accurate modeling is more difficult. Closely spaced buildings and process equipment common at petrochemical plants make it even more so. Until now, accurate load prediction required time-consuming and expensive turbulent-combustion modeling. A number of simplified methods are based on unobstructed line-of-site conditions, which can overestimate or underestimate blast loads because they don’t account for channeling or shielding effects.
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Associate Principal Jim Wesevich, who heads the firm’s petrochemical market sector development, has wanted a better tool for more than a decade. When he joined the Weidlinger Applied Science practice in late 2013, he finally had the means to make it happen. Our software development team, based in our Cupertino, California, office, worked with our petrochemical engineering specialists to build, test and validate FacilityBlast VCE. The fast-running tool uses CFD analysis to account for channeling and shielding effects in a fraction of the time needed for turbulent-combustion modeling. It provides a convenient tool for designers and process-safety planners to more accurately quantify VCE hazards and leads to more effective protective solutions.
Model renderings show a blast wave sweeping over a structure. From top: a pressure wave at 0.26 seconds after ignition, leading up to deflagration; peak overpressure distribution; peak impulse distribution.
© Thornton Tomasetti
Case Study 3
Petrochemical Engineers, Blast Analysis Gurus and Software Developers Team Up to Predict Vapor-Cloud Explosion Effects
“ My work on software development is a little like doing a puzzle: there’s a problem, you play around with it, and you solve it. I like putting together something that other people can appreciate and use.”
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Lisa Nikodym Senior Associate, Thornton Tomasetti – Structural Analyst/Software Development and Testing Worked as a structural engineer at a small firm for nine years before joining Weidlinger Applied Science in 1995. • Job description in 22 words: “I do computer simulations of things crashing or exploding and help produce software that helps other people simulate things crashing or exploding.” • Has traveled to more than 35 countries; highlights include Jordan, Tanzania (an incredible wildlife safari), Russia, Patagonia, Norway and Malaysia. • Has always wanted to work in the AEC industry: “When my parents gave me Barbie dolls, I would build houses and road networks for them.”
Vincent Nasri Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – Petrochemical Engineering The opportunity to combine creativity and practicality drew Vincent to engineering. • He is Armenian-American, born and raised in Brooklyn.• Credits his upbringing in a diverse city with making him better at teamwork. • Lives in Austin, Texas, where he earned a master’s degree in structural engineering. • Passionate about hiking in state and national parks; his favorite is Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. • Why he loves his job? “I work on keeping people safe.”
Ming Xie Senior Project Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – Graphical User Interface (GUI) Designer Grew up in Beijing, China, and returns often to visit family and friends. • Attended South China University of Technology in Guangzhou – where the engineering curriculum included computer programming – for bachelor’s and master’s degrees. • Earned a Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. • Lives and works in Cupertino, California. • A serious amateur photographer, he loves shooting sunny beaches and wide-open spaces. • Enjoys the creative aspects of GUI design. • A basketball player in school, he now never misses a Warriors game.
– Lisa Nikodym
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How Does Diversity Nurture Success?
We convened a group of specialists to discuss the challenges and potential rewards for organizations that encourage a wide range of diversities. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Participants Frank Dobbin Professor Department of Sociology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Valerie M. Grubb Principal Val Grubb and Associates Ltd. New Orleans, Louisiana Laurie Hawkinson Partner Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects New York, New York Martin Reeves Senior Partner & Managing Director Boston Consulting Group New York, New York Stephanie Turner National D&I Analytics Lead Deloitte Leadership Center for Inclusion, Survey Research and Analytics Deloitte Consulting, LLP New York, New York Contributor Vishaan Chakrabarti Founder, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism New York, New York Thanks to Vishaan for his assistance in developing the discussion outline and recruiting participants.
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Can we agree on a definition of diversity? Val: Most executives and managers think of diversity as a gender and race mix, but the piece to pay attention to is mirroring your customer base. At Oxygen Media, an entertainment company that targets women, diversity meant hiring men because the company was 70 percent female. The definition therefore depends on context. Stephanie: Gen Xers and baby boomers define diversity mainly by characteristics like race and gender, whereas millennials focus on cognitive diversity, meaning that even if I have the same education as you, I’m going to have different thoughts and opinions that are informed by my background and experience. Our research shows that millennials think of diversity in terms of total identity – not only race, gender, age, ethnicity, culture and religion, but also other things like opinions, thoughts, background, experience, education – everything that makes people who they are. Those characteristics are what they want in their organizations.
There are also different views about the purpose of diversity. Older generations view diversity as fulfilling a moral contract – the right thing to do – whereas millennials also see it as a driver of positive business outcomes. What is the benefit of increasing diversity? Martin: We need it for two reasons: first, for reasons of justice and fairness; second, because diversity contributes to performance by providing grist for learning. If you don’t have genetic diversity in biology, or cognitive diversity in business, you won’t have evolutionary learning. The catch is that we can’t know what kind of diversity we need today to produce a given outcome tomorrow. We have to try things, and over time get there. Leveraging diversity is about tinkering, not precision engineering. Laurie: The value of diversity really comes down to accelerating learning, which is what happens when you sit
around a table with people and listen, trust and share. My favorite thing in my work is the “$10,000 meeting” – which, on project teams, is probably more like a $50,000 meeting! That’s when the entire project team sits around the table and talks through a problem or an issue. We work it out together. What do you need to put diversity to work? Frank: It’s true that any successful diversity initiative needs support from the top, but successful programs are not “command and control.” Too many diversity programs are based on the idea that we need to change the rules about how people come in and move up in the firm, and the way to change the rules and eliminate bias is to put bureaucratic controls on managers so they have to hire people who are objectively most qualified. But those top-down controls don’t work. In our studies, managers don’t hire the top performer on a test; they sabotage the test and make only people they don’t know take the test. Their buddies don’t
Frank Dobbin
have to take it: “He won’t be a problem; I’ve known him for years.” This is one way in which a command-andcontrol system has been ineffective.
Valerie M. Grubb
We also see that civil rights grievance procedures, which are in virtually all Fortune 500 companies, have adverse effects. When you establish an elaborate grievance procedure, five years later you have significantly fewer white women, black men and women, Latinos and Latinas, and Asian-American men and women in management than if you hadn’t done anything. It’s apparently largely through retaliation that civil rights grievance procedures have adverse effects, actually reducing diversity in management.
Laurie Hawkinson
Martin Reeves
Stephanie Turner
Vishaan Chakrabarti (contributor)
Bess Adler/Thornton Tomasetti
The third example is mandatory diversity training. When people feel that diversity training is being forced on them, they rebel and sabotage the system and firms see significant decreases in managerial diversity. Laurie: As a practicing architect and teacher of architecture, I see the critical ingredient of diversity and resilience
as social trust. In our field, we’re always collaborating. When trust is in play, you’re sometimes giving over your professional expertise to somebody who’s outside your area of expertise. It can be very uncomfortable, but without that trust, there’s no collaboration. Likewise, resilience and our need to learn would also be impossible. Martin: There are some paradoxes to bridge. If you want diversity to drive performance, you need enough inclusiveness in the first place to get a diverse composition. Then you need trust so that people can work together, but you need to stop short of groupthink, of homogenization. And you need a critical eye to select the best ideas. In my work, I call managing these paradoxes “ambidexterity” – the ability to think and behave in different ways at different times. Research shows that companies and individuals find this hard to do. So you have to train people to be ambidextrous and create a culture that promotes ambidexterity.
Or you need to be smart about things like team composition, to create ambidextrous teams from individuals who may not be ambidextrous. Frank: Kathy Phillips at Columbia Business School studied a homogenous team – all white men – into which she inserted one or two women, or one or two African-Americans. She found that those teams are more innovative because they are more likely to be able to respond when resilience is needed. It’s not because the individual says something different or brings a different idea. Interestingly, it’s because everybody in the room gets out of the habit of groupthink, or of always following the alpha male. Just having somebody different in the room makes you question your assumptions before you jump in and say, “Let’s do this.” It also discourages other people from jumping on the bandwagon right away. It’s a fascinating effect because it suggests that diversity is just good for how a team operates.
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“ Just having somebody different in the room makes you question your assumptions before you jump in and say, ‘Let’s do this.’” – Frank Dobbin
Since like tends to hire like, how do you break the homogeneity cycle? How do you hire the first Latina, for example? Val: Look for candidates where you wouldn’t normally look. When I worked for an aircraft-engine manufacturer in Indianapolis, I led our engineering co-op and intern program. When I took over the program, we had 99 percent white men, and by the time I left, three years later, almost 20 percent of our students were nonwhite or female. We made a concerted effort to recruit from places that had never been on our radar – historically black colleges and universities and other minority institutions. One of the lessons we learned is you can’t bring in one person from Mississippi, for example, because they have no one else like them in the middle of Indiana. We learned to go after two or three students from these schools. Now each had a friend there, someone who understood how different this was. Our retention rate wasn’t
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100 percent for the pioneers, but it improved significantly once we recruited in pairs or threes. Diversity needs inclusion to become effective. How do you bring about inclusion? Martin: Inclusiveness is everything required to put diversity to work. This includes affiliation, visible success and career-path flexibility. For many firms, these are more the frontier than compositional diversity. Legislating behaviors doesn’t work, because you get compensating effects. You get fear of mistakes. People become obsessed with compliance, not substance. Establishing enabling rules and interventions, as opposed to legislating behaviors and targets, is a promising emerging area. A simple but powerful enabling rule might be, for example, requiring a compulsory dissenting opinion. If you simply introduce one new rule – such as, “every proposal has to have a serious counterproposal” -it changes everything. It doesn’t tell you who you need to hire, but it means
that people start to get fired for not disagreeing with their boss. You need truly diverse thinking. People discover that they need different types of people on teams to do this. External pressure is a great motivator of internal change. If you have new customers, or customers who want new things, this is extremely motivating because it’s baked into the highest-level metric in the organization: the business purpose. It is often better to frame the thinking not as “What does my company need to do?” but “What are my clients struggling with in this domain?” How do you measure success in a diversity and inclusion program? Frank: I measure success as the percentage of all underrepresented groups in management. A homegrown task force can really move those percentages. People have told me, “I didn’t want to be on that task force, but they asked me to, so I went. Then I wanted to get off the damn task force,
so I needed us to figure this out and show that the needle had moved.” They measure success as retention rates. They look at recruitment. They start doing exit interviews and find out why people leave, and then start trying to fix the problems that cause people to leave. Stephanie: Just talking about diversity metrics can help change the conversation. There’s a risk the conversation can become punitive, though, if you fail to meet the metrics. The discussion has to be grounded in your values and strategy, and have a long-term focus. There needs to be accountability, to get leaders involved in driving this, not just the chief diversity officer or an HR person. Often this is a new approach, since the top metrics in most organizations are either financial outcomes or productivity ratios.
“ If you simply introduce one new rule – such as ‘every proposal has to have a serious counterproposal’ -it changes everything.”
Bess Adler/Thornton Tomasetti
– Martin Reeves
What’s the most important advice you’d offer any organization seeking to improve its diversity and inclusion?
toughest challenges, and they do so by working across all aspects of diversity.
Stephanie: My colleague Christie Smith says that leaders have to be not just change agents but activists for human potential. That means acting for inclusion. We have to engage our entire workforce in finding their purpose, and that purpose should have a clear tie to the business. Inclusion is about bringing everyone together to solve a problem. Our people want to solve our
Laurie: Most of the methods we’ve talked about are not top-down leadership, but are about advocating for human potential wherever you are. It’s about becoming an activist force for human potential. And that begins by building social trust. Martin: First, don’t stop at compositional diversity. Include variation, selection and amplification at all steps of the evolutionary learning cycle.
Second, don’t think about this only coming from the top. Like Laurie says, start where you are: with you and your team. If every team were doing that, you’d have a very adaptive organization. Trying to fix everything at once and relying on somebody else to lead it is a bad way to get started. Frank: Huge positive effects consistently come from interventions that get everybody involved in making diversity their responsibility: mentoring and
sponsorship programs, active recruitment at colleges and universities, referral programs, task forces. When we interview people, they say, “Yeah, I wasn’t a big proponent of diversity until I got involved in recruitment,” or “I was a mentor to a Latina, and now I’m onboard with that.” A common problem is that firms “hive off” diversity management – delegate it to people or groups who are already diverse and have drunk the Kool-Aid. Their programs are often sort of painted on top – not integrated into everybody’s life, not a part of how everybody thinks about what their jobs are. Val: Diversity and inclusion are not “one and done.” Fail fast to move forward. If one thing doesn’t move the needle or take you in the right direction, try something else. Stay flexible and be willing to innovate. Visit ThorntonTomasetti.com/ Diversity_Roundtable for an unabridged version of this discussion.
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Case Study 4
Collaboration on T-Mobile Arena Propels Service Diversification Location Las Vegas, Nevada Team Owner: T-Mobile Arena Company, owned by AEG Worldwide and MGM Resorts International General Contractor: Hunt-PENTA Joint Venture Architect: Populous
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mong the many features of T-Mobile arena is a large cantilevered balcony that slopes across the glass façade. The balcony may be used as a VIP area for club members, a venue for private parties or a viewing area for performances on the plaza below. Its slender profile posed a challenge to our structural design team: how to control vibration caused by crowd activities. A typical structural solution would require a lot of expensive steel, so we looked for a better way. The answer led to the addition of a new class of services to Thornton Tomasetti’s toolkit: acoustics, noise and vibration consulting. The balcony rises from the main concourse to the club level, supported on large cantilevers. Its exterior slope tapers to a thin edge, an important component of the architectural design. To optimize the balcony structure, we teamed with Swallow Acoustic Consultants, Ltd. (SACL), with whom
This collaboration between the two firms was so fruitful, we decided to form an alliance. In January 2017, Thornton Tomasetti acquired SACL. The deal is a win for everyone. Our suite of services became more diverse, while the SACL team gained access to a wider pool of clients in more places. And – with noise and vibration control playing a greater role in building design as buildings become taller and longer and materials become lighter and more efficient – our clients now have an efficient, integrated option to make their projects more successful. The TMDs are suspended from the balcony’s floor system.
Kevin Legenza/Thornton Tomasetti
The 20,000-seat multipurpose arena opened in April 2016. Its large exterior balcony extends as much as 35 feet from the glass façade.
we’ve often worked over the past 30 years. SACL designed five tuned mass dampers (TMDs) – each consisting of a few tons of plate steel, springs and dashpots – that hang from the balcony floor system between the cantilevered primary trusses. This solution reduced the truss steel by more than 50 percent, a financial and sustainability victory for the project.
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“ I’ve often worked with people who have a difficult time expressing themselves in English, and I’ve had that same experience while studying and working in Germany. I try to slow down, to make sure people get their ideas across before I respond or make decisions.” – Kevin Legenza
Nancy Mayorga Assistant Project Manager, Burke Construction Group (formerly Senior Project Engineer, PENTA Building Group) Oversaw coordination of structural steel and mixed metals – including the TMDs – on the T-Mobile construction site. • Studied industrial engineering in her native El Salvador; moved to the U.S. shortly after graduation. • A single mom, she earned a degree in construction management from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, while working full-time. • Loves to travel, and names Brazil, London and Italy as favorite destinations. • Credits being a native Spanish speaker as a big advantage on job sites. • Favorite read? Dante’s Divine Comedy. • Cites confidence in her own abilities and knowledge as key to succeeding as a woman in a maledominated field.
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Melissa Wong Senior Scientist, Swallow Acoustic Consultants, Ltd. – Acoustic Modeling and Analysis Lives and works in her hometown of Toronto, to which her parents immigrated from Hong Kong. • Earned a bachelor’s degree in applied science, which provided a background in all major branches of engineering. • Plays guitar for fun and is certified at level 9 (of 10) in piano by the Royal Conservatory of Music. • Has traveled extensively in Japan. • Lived abroad for a year while earning a master’s degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. • Loves to watch basketball: “Go Raptors!”
GERMAN ENGLISH
Kevin Legenza Associate Principal, Thornton Tomasetti – Lead Structural Designer Earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kansas, and spent a year each studying in Stuttgart and Zurich. • Has also lived in Austria, Australia (where he met his wife), Dubai and Singapore. • Once dreamed of creating movie special effects in a “monster shop.” • Played lacrosse in high school and college. • Loves drawing and uses it to communicate visually with architects. • Now lives in San Diego, where he directs the firm’s local office.
“ My knowledge of industrial engineering makes me better at construction management. Industrial engineering focuses on process, doing things faster, safer and cheaper. So when I’m in the field, I always ask myself how we can make each task more efficient.” – Nancy Mayorga
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Case Study 5
For Al Maryah Central Mall, Synergy = Success
Kyle Krall Senior Principal & UAE Office Director, Thornton Tomasetti Has worked on projects throughout the U.S., UAE, U.K., Italy, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. • Holds an M.S. in civil engineering from Columbia University and a BAE degree from Penn State. • Keeps a list of the countries he’s visited, now 37 and counting, with a goal of 100. • As a child, delivered newspapers and worked in a craft shop owned by his mother in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. • Favorite tongue-in-cheek expression: “If you’re smiling, you’re not working hard enough” – a rule he admits to constantly breaking.
Location Abu Dhabi, UAE
Chris Bresloff/Thornton Tomasetti
Courtesy Gulf Related
MALAYALAM ENGLISH • HINDI TAMIL • KANNADA TELUGU
Team Developer: Gulf Related Design Architect: Gensler General Contractor: Multiplex
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Rajesh Chirayath Senior Design Manager, Multiplex Born in Kerala, India; raised and educated in Bangalore. • Loves cooking, and once aspired to be a chef or food and beverage manager. • Is a fan of cricket – Team India – and team captain Virat Kohli. • Proudest accomplishments include a commendation from the CEO on his very first job, as a site engineer at Tata Sherwood Apartments in Bangalore. • Has traveled in Germany, Italy, Scotland, the UAE and India, but insists, “Dubai is still my favorite. It’s the world’s most happening place.”
To meet the project’s many challenges, we enlisted specialized expertise from offices on three continents to assist the UAE staff. Professionals in our Abu Dhabi, London and Mumbai offices performed structural and façade design. Colleagues in Chicago, New York and Kansas City assisted with specialty design, including structural steel for the atrium, skylights and cinemas. Our engineers in Philadelphia and Albuquerque conducted high-end analysis for bollards and protective design, and our New York-based Weidlinger Transportation practice assisted with AASHTO requirements for the pedestrian bridges. The synergy among our services was crucial to the successful integration of all structural components, including façade, pedestrian bridges, steel-to-concrete connections and protective design, because so many of these elements were closely interrelated. Abu Dhabi is one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. We worked with developers, architects, contractors, labor and management from every part of the world. Our panoply of skills and locations helped us navigate this diverse environment and design a structure that will appeal to the many cultures that call Abu Dhabi home.
Maria Gamboa Retail Delivery Manager, Gulf Related Supervises the design and execution of retail fit-outs for shopping centers. • Her passion for designing restaurants and food service establishments led to her involvement in mixed-use facilities. • Raised by parents who were engineers, which piqued her interest in architecture. • Lives in Abu Dhabi, adores Paris, but says, “Home will always be the Philippines, where I was raised.” • Dreams of attending culinary school and opening a restaurant in Manila. •Her core philosophy: “Don’t worry about pleasing others, because you can’t. Just be yourself and be the best of who you are.”
GERMAN ENGLISH
The 260,000-square-meter (2.8 million-square-foot) urban shopping complex, located on Al Maryah Island, is set to open in 2018. The enormous development will encompass retail and food service outlets, movie theaters, and sports and recreation areas.
TAGALOG ENGLISH
“W
hat’s special about Al Maryah Central,” says UAE Office Director Kyle Krall, “is that we leveraged the combined strength of our resources to make the project come together. By handling the structural, façade and protective design internally, we were able to deliver a more coordinated and holistic design.”
Tariq “Taz” Shaikh Studio Director & Design Manager, Gensler Attended the Birmingham School of Architecture in the U.K. before moving to Germany, Hong Kong, and then back to the U.K. • Became fluent in German and joined the Architektenkammer Hessen while working – and playing rugby – in Frankfurt. • Flew with and learned marksmanship in the Air Training Corps (U.K. Air Cadets) as a boy. • Advises aspiring architects to “choose the right way, even if it’s the hardest way, because you’ll reap the rewards in the long run.”
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FARSI ENGLISH
Case Study 6
Communities of Practice: Flat-Slab Design “Sparks” Firmwide Interest
Dara Naderi Project Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – CoP Leader Enjoys the problem-solving aspects of structural engineering. • His father and uncle were structural engineers, so he grew up knowing that’s what he wanted to be. • Moved from Tehran, Iran, to Potomac, Maryland, when he was 12. • Chairs the Structural Engineers Association of Metropolitan Washington’s Young Members Group. • Favorite quote is by Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Kara Raymond Senior Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – CoP Member Has worked in the Weidlinger Protective Design and Structural Engineering practices. • Earned bachelor’s and M.Eng. degrees in structural engineering from Cornell. • Also active in Women@TT, a CoP that promotes the interests of women in the engineering profession. • Loves to bake. • Loves spending time with her young daughter even more. • First paid job was as a coxswain, the person who steers the boat for a rowing team.
Robert Rogers Senior Project Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – CoP Post-Tensioning Coordinator Before studying civil engineering at Texas Tech, he dreamed of becoming an apple salesman (the fruit, not the computer). • Volunteers for the ACE Mentor Program and Toastmasters International to help young people grow, learn and develop their talents. • Trains co-workers in BIM and Revit modeling. • Among his favorite activities are weekly karaoke sessions with his three kids.
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Michelle Olender Senior Project Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – CoP Member Holds BAE and MAE degrees from Penn State. • Studied abroad at the University of Leeds, England. • Worked in New York City, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. • Career was inspired by her grandfather, an engineering professor. • Studied swing dancing with her husband and is now relearning tap. • Colleagues look to her for advice because “I’m good at helping people see another side of things.”
L
ast year, we announced plans for our Communities of Practice (CoPs) initiative, aimed at sharing knowledge, contacts and ideas across the company. The firmwide rollout in November 2016 established 15 CoPs and coincided with the launch of Spark, our social intranet.
Elevating the Priority of Inclusion and Diversity: I+D2
I
“To be the global driver of change and innovation,” says Vice Chairman Aine Brazil, “we must be inclusive and diverse – in the customary sense of gender and race, as well as diverse in background, education, experience, expertise, culture, age and sexual orientation. To ensure the strength and resilience of our organization, we must reflect the diversity of the communities and clients we serve.”
Dara Naderi started the Flat-Slab Design community with two goals in mind: streamlining flat-slab design and analysis across the firm and establishing Thornton Tomasetti as an expert in the field. The CoP has attracted more views and generated more activity than any other community on Spark.
The I+D2 effort is structured with a small working group that leads initiatives, a larger committee that defines objectives and oversees the work, and a still larger advisory group that provides feedback and guidance on direction and priorities. Goals defined for 2017 include:
Dara has assembled a diverse team: six of the community’s 17 contributors are women, and members hail from 11 offices and represent a range of positions, from entry-level engineers to executives.
• Increasing new hires from underrepresented groups by 10 percent. • Reducing attrition among underrepresented groups by at least 10 percent. • Improving the favorability rating on our inclusion survey. Means to achieve these goals include ensuring diverse slates for recruitment, tracking local inclusion and diversity metrics to establish baselines for each office, and making I&D part of everything we do.
The flat-slab CoP pages on Spark include a resource for technical references, a questionand-answer forum and a repository for project examples. A discussion board enables dialogue on subjects posted by the CoP leader.
“We start in 2017 with a few small but significant and measurable goals,” Aine says. “We also begin the longer-term effort of recognizing and addressing unconscious biases and creating an atmosphere of trust. Those foundations are essential to ensuring our continued progress.”
I+D2 Mission: To become a driver of change and innovation, we are committed to creating an inclusive and diverse culture in which all our people can realize their full potential. Bess Adler/Thornton Tomasetti
The CoP site is organized into 14 topical subcategories, and all employees can visit, post questions or view documents. Dara explains, “If someone encounters an unfamiliar situation, they can ask us how others have approached it. Each office often has different strengths, so one of our goals is to identify best practices and compile them into a single set of guidelines for everyone.”
n 2016, the firm’s board of directors established I+D2, a committee on inclusion and diversity, formally recognizing the critical role these attributes play in creating an environment where innovation can thrive.
The I+D2 committee, clockwise from left: Ray Daddazio, Aine Brazil, Peter DiMaggio, Lynn N. Simon, Jim Kent and Stephanie Kelly. Out of view are Faz Ehsan, Tanya de Hoog, Amy Hattan, Ian King and Peggy Van Eepoel.
Team Owner: National Park Service Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle
GREEK ENGLISH SPANISH
Peggy Van Eepoel Associate Principal, Thornton Tomasetti – Protective Design Project Manager The daughter of immigrants from Greece and the Philippines, Peggy grew up in Queens, New York. • Once wanted to be a lawyer, but was inspired to be an engineer by the ACE Mentor Program. • Credits her mother with encouraging her to pursue ambitious career goals and instilling a strong work ethic. • Has worked on more than 20 U.S. embassies around the world. • A founding member of the U.S. Resiliency Council. • Leads the firm’s Weidlinger Protective Design practice in the Washington office.
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“ Working in other countries, you have to understand different ways of setting up buildings. There are different preferences. I use some of those ideas in projects here at home.” – Peggy Van Eepoel
Courtesy Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, LLP
Location Washington, DC
James Richardson Senior Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – Façade Engineer Raised in Cape Town, South Africa. • Studied and worked in Belgium. • Now lives in Brooklyn. • Holds a B.S. degree in applied mathematics, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering and architecture, and a Ph.D. in engineering science. • Enjoys philosophy, especially Nietzsche and Heidegger. • Worked as a structural engineer for three years before moving into façade engineering and special structures. • Names Swiss Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor as his favorite architect.
DUTCH ENGLISH AFRIKAANS FRENCH
Case Study 7
Four Practices Collaborate on New Visitor Security Screening Facility for the Washington Monument
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e provided integrated structural engineering, protective design, high-fidelity blast analysis and façade engineering for a glass-clad visitor security screening facility at the foot of the Washington Monument. While the structure is small, competing requirements for visibility, security and function, plus aesthetic and historic-preservation considerations, packed a lot of complexity into its 810 square feet. A short design schedule and tight budget compounded these challenges. “Having multiple disciplines with Thornton Tomasetti has been very beneficial,” says Project Manager Gretchen Pfaehler. “It helps coordinate the design – especially when there are changes – and it’s worked really well.” Having a diverse group of professionals working together under one roof also lowers costs. “It reduces management and administrative overlap,” says Pfaehler, “so it’s a creative way to give the National Park Service a better-integrated design and a better fee.”
Peter Dunn Associate, Thornton Tomasetti – Blast Analysis Lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. • Performs high-fidelity computational fluiddynamics modeling to determine blast loads on structures. • Lived in a 50-person town in Quebec, Canada, until age 6, then moved to Toronto. • Loves to travel. Top three destinations are the Philippines (to visit his mother’s family), the Galapagos Islands and Siberia. • Holds four degrees from MIT: a Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics, and a bachelor’s in applied mathematics. • Minored in film studies. Favorite movie: Japanese ghost story Ugetsu Monogatari.
ENGLISH FRENCH
ENGLISH SPANISH FRENCH
Gretchen Pfaehler Associate Partner, Beyer Blinder Belle – Project Manager and Preservation Architect Studied art history and political science in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, before pursuing a degree in architecture from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. • Studied and worked in Paris for nearly three years. • Has worked on projects in 14 countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Pacific Rim. • Plays the clarinet and cello. • Proudest achievement? “Finding a way to mix what I love about history with architecture to develop buildings for the future.”
Michael Cropper Senior Project Engineer, Thornton Tomasetti – Structural Project Manager Dreamed of being a fighter pilot, but at 6'5", was too tall. Got his private pilot’s license and became a structural engineer instead. • Worked at our office in Abu Dhabi for four years. • Helped design Al Maryah Central Mall (see page 18). • Climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his wife. Keeps a photo on his desk from the 19,341-foot summit to remind him that “it was really hard, but I did it. So I know I can handle anything work throws at me.”
Small but complex, this “Swiss watch” of a building will improve security, as well as the experience for visitors being screened. Its shape and transparency will complement the form of the monument.
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“ Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” “ If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.” – Margaret Mead Anthropologist
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– Stephen Covey Educator and Author
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CORE
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Driving change and innovation in our industry: CORE’s 27-hour December hackathon, held in our New York, Madison Avenue, office, involved 100 people from 20 companies, including architecture, construction, software and other engineering firms from London, Boston, Washington, Dallas, Toronto and New York. The mission was to create something new and useful. By the end, the group had developed 12 projects that resulted in open-source software releases.
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ORE, our R&D incubator, enables us to collaborate with project teams and industry colleagues to drive change and innovation across our industry. It is at the heart of what we do. Following our 2015 merger with Weidlinger, we reimagined CORE and expanded its scope. Today, it consists of two related efforts: CORE studio, which focuses on innovation related to the built environment, and CORE science, which investigates and models the basic physics that underlie services in many of our practices. Projects in CORE are wide-ranging and cover topics that include performance-based fire design, 3D photogrammetry,
earthquake protection, vibration monitoring, probabilistic characterization of 3D printing, and soil/structure interaction. Research projects are solicited firmwide, and candidates are reviewed and selected by an R&D oversight committee and funded to support their development. Current projects number more than 100. CORE services are often woven into project proposals to support a specific project-based need. When our intellectual property (IP) needs a structured maturation process to reach its full potential, it moves to our technology accelerator, TTWiiN, which is an independent company focused on preparing IP for commercialization.
TTWiiN Technology Accelerator
Bess Adler/Thornton Tomasetti
Elisabeth Malsch, center, and Marguerite Pinto, right, with the fluid harmonic damper their team designed and recently installed in a Brooklyn high-rise. The new damper design, which adapts NASA technology used in rockets, provides vibration damping at lower cost, is easier to adjust and has a smaller footprint than conventional dampers. It is part of the Hummingbird Kinetics technology suite.
I
n May 2016, we launched TTWiiN, a privately held company that develops and commercializes new technologies incubated through our CORE R&D program. By the start of 2017, TTWiiN had evaluated six products for commercialization and has now stood up five independent companies: PZFlex: Engineers and designers around the world rely on PZFlex – the most powerful finite-element software for piezoelectric and wave-propagation analysis. PZFlex.com Konstru: The first-of-its-kind 3D collaboration software that lets all contributors to a project seamlessly exchange information between all common building modeling and analysis platforms. Konstru.com VistaMat Suite: A trio of powerful, interrelated software tools (formerly known as WAimat) that facilitate advanced material modeling and bring new functionality to the most widely used finite-element programs. VistaMat.com
PUMPKIN Mounts: Shock and vibration isolation mount technology with multiple applications across defense, industrial and transportation sectors. PumpkinMounts.com Hummingbird Kinetics: Wind-induced vibration damping for tall and supertall buildings. HummingbirdKinetics.com “Our R&D work at CORE has always been a driver of change and innovation at Thornton Tomasetti, and we expect ideas and developments to continue to flow between CORE and TTWiiN,” says Tom Scarangello, Thornton Tomasetti chairman and CEO. “Now, when emergent intellectual property needs outside support, TTWiiN is ready to enable the next step. What has always been good for us can now be even better for our industry and beyond.”
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Third Annual Purpose & Values Awards
Our purpose and values are the distinguishing features of our firm. For the third year, we invited all employees – now 1,200 in more than 40 offices – to nominate colleagues who best embody them. Below are brief descriptions of each winner, followed by excerpts from their nomination letters.
Rob Otani
Ken Maschke
Peggy Van Eepoel
Bob Nacheman
Rebecca Jones and Phill Thompson
Purpose
Value
Value
Value
Value
Rob Otani, Principal, CORE, Madison Avenue, New York Rob developed and leads CORE studio, our firmwide virtual incubator of ideas. CORE cultivates innovation through support of more than 100 projects and its industrywide technology symposium and hackathon. Rob also serves as leader for our special structures services.
Ken Maschke Vice President, Renewal, Chicago Ken has played a key role in the Renewal practice, leading a variety of structural design, investigation, renovation and adaptive-reuse projects. He was an early proponent of Revit in façade design, introduced the first fully integrated 3D model of an existing building and contributed to the design of the 3D-printed Office of the Future.
Peggy Van Eepoel Associate Principal, Weidlinger Protective Design, Washington, DC Peggy established and leads the Protective Design practice in Washington, where she is a recognized expert in security solutions. She is co-editor of the ASCE state-of-the-practice manual on structural design for blast effects.
Bob Nacheman, Principal, Renewal, Newark Retiring this year after four decades with the firm, Bob is a recognized leader in renovation and restoration of structures and envelope systems. He has worked on the Empire State Building nearly continuously since 1986.
Rebecca Jones, Senior Associate, Structural Engineering, Seattle In just 10 years with the firm, Rebecca has contributed to projects as diverse as Hudson Yards, Basrah Sports City and our earthquake response work in New Zealand. She has worked in four of our offices, and serves on multiple professional and technical committees.
We embrace challenges to make lasting contributions.
“Under Rob’s leadership, CORE studio has made an indelible mark, becoming a source of innovation for us and raising the game across the industry for better and faster computational tools.”
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We are passionate about what we do.
“With infectious creativity and dedication, Ken always brings a solution to the table that draws on the best ideas out there – from tried and true to truly innovative.”
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We challenge people to grow.
“Peggy challenges us to grow by creating an environment where we can truly collaborate and support each other as a team – both personally and professionally.” For more, see the case study on page 22.
We look beyond the obvious to solve the real problem.
“Bob shows us that the quality of your questions is just as important as the quality of your answers. He always resists the temptation to jump to conclusions, and shows us how to explore every opportunity to question what may, at first, seem obvious.”
We see opportunity where others focus on risk.
“Rebecca teaches us that the best engineers have the courage to explore their curiosity. She has moved across practices, always learning and teaching others, and has worked in offices around the world in her quest to learn more.”
Phill Thompson, Principal and Director of European Operations, Weidlinger Applied Science, Edinburgh Phill filed the patent for the air-gun shock-testing method now used by several NATO navies to test survivability. His team now performs shock analysis on every U.K. naval platform. With the advent of TTWiiN and his development of the PUMPKIN Mount (see page 27) for shock isolation, he continues to see opportunity where others see risk. “Phill has a sixth sense about matching innovation and market demand, and the discipline and rigor to do the hardest part of all – bring ideas to life.”
2016 Sustainability Highlights
Our people are our firm’s greatest asset, so we developed a corporate sustainability approach that focuses equally on the environment and our people. In the past year, we’ve made gains toward our twin goals of climate-neutral business operations by 2030 and leadership in sustainable engineering – all while striving to create healthy, inclusive and fulfilling workplaces for our people.
Greening Our Offices
Achieving Ever-Higher Levels of Sustainability
Leading-Edge Sustainable Engineering
Embracing Diversity and Inclusion
Promoting Health and Happiness
In 2016, our San Francisco office space became the first LEEDv4 CI Platinum project certified in the United States. We are progressing on our path to climate neutrality: six offices are LEED certified, and three more are registered. More green champions than ever are working to meet green office goals. And we are in our third year of carbon-offsetting all air travel.
Our Sustainability practice is exploring new frontiers of sustainable design. We celebrated a North American Passive House award and consulted on a number of WELL Building Standard, Living Building Challenge and net positive energy projects.
We are contributing to collaborative research across the industry on embodied carbon in structures. This was our fifth year of calculating the embodied carbon in our structural projects. As a platinum sponsor of the Carbon Leadership Forum, we’ve played a pivotal role in developing new initiatives for achieving sustainability in engineering.
Our firmwide Communities of Practice initiative (see page 20) is a forum for collaboration that is growing the membership and active locations of our flagship affinity group, Women@TT, for employees who wish to support each other on issues related to gender disparity in engineering.
Our programs to create a comfortable and healthy work environment include wellness competitions, a corporate grant program supporting comfort improvements, and new standing desks for employees. Employee volunteerism is also on the rise, with support from our Volunteer Day initiative.
The San Francisco office hosted an open house to show off its new LEEDv4 CI Platinum-certified space.
Zurich Insurance North American Headquarters achieved 62 percent energy-cost savings with help from our sustainability analysts.
We provided structural engineering on the College of Architecture and Environment Design at Kent State University, a model of environmental design.
Members of the Women@TT CoP volunteered at a nonprofit dedicated to fighting hunger. From left: Lisa Chong, Jen Kearney, Samantha Lopez, Kate Williamson and Lisa Frazier.
A biannual wellness challenge encouraged employees to practice emotional well-being by “starting your day with a smile.” Elsa Mullin follows that advice.
For more, view our latest sustainability report:
GreenReport.ThorntonTomasetti.com Image credits (from left): Thornton Tomasetti, © James Steinkamp Photography, Courtesy Weiss Manfredi, Amber Shoals/Thornton Tomasetti, Thornton Tomasetti.
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Thornton Tomasetti Foundation
Since 2008, the foundation has distributed over $800,000 in grants and scholarships to more than 30 organizations.
In 2016, the Thornton Tomasetti Foundation, an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, distributed $151,644 in scholarships and charitable contributions in support of its mission.
Highlights of 2016 Commitments
Learn more: ThorntonTomasettiFoundation.org.
Bridges to Prosperity: The Messiah College chapter used its $10,000 award to build an 85-meter suspended bridge over Panama’s Rio Mariato, providing more than 400 people with safe, reliable access to schools, clinics and markets.
Board of Governors Richard L. Tomasetti, P.E., NAE, Hon. AIA Chairman Joel S. Weinstein, P.E. Vice Chairman Andrew Goldbaum, CPA Treasurer Elisabeth Malsch, Ph.D., P.E. Secretary Joseph G. Burns, S.E., P.E., CEng, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP Raymond Daddazio, EngScD, P.E., F.EMI Wayne Stocks, P.E., LEED AP Activities Committee Rachel Jackson, S.E., LEED AP BD+C
Build Change: We donated $10,000 to support the seismic retrofit of a school in Padang, Indonesia.
GeoHazards International: We donated $25,000 to inventory schools in Delhi, India, with stone slab roofs and outline the steps necessary to protect children when earthquakes occur. The Urban Assembly: We contributed $10,000 toward educating 9,000 underserved children in 21 New York City theme schools.
Engineers Without Borders: The University of Wisconsin, Madison chapter received $10,000 to help build a bridge in Guatemala to link communities to nearby cities. We donated $10,000 to the University of Wisconsin, Platteville chapter to fund the final phase of building a primary school in Ghana that will provide tuition-free education to more than 250 children. The Milwaukee School of Engineering team used its $5,000 award to build a pedestrian bridge in Guatemala, connecting three rural communities to markets and healthcare services. New This Year: The foundation is working with Trilogy Publications to develop a digital site for Those Amazing Engineers, a booklet that introduces young readers to engineering.
Amy Macdonald Peter Quigley, P.E., DBIA Foundation Administrator Gwendolyn Dowdy
National scholarship winners Michelle Burnworth (Drexel University), Julieta Moradei (Northeastern University) and Mark Strapko (Johns Hopkins University) each received $10,000. 30
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U.K. scholarship winner Margaret Longman (University of Sheffield) received ÂŁ5,000.
Student Innovation Fellowship winners Andrew Fann (University of California, San Diego) and Tim Michiels (Princeton) each received $5,000.
Board of Directors & Officers Board of Directors
Founding Principals
Practice Leaders
Regional Leaders
Global Support
Thomas Z. Scarangello, P.E. Chairman & CEO
Charles H. Thornton Ph.D., P.E., NAE, Hon. AIA Richard L. Tomasetti P.E., NAE, Hon. AIA
East U.S. Tod Rittenhouse, P.E. Senior Principal
Andrew Goldbaum, CPA Chief Operating Officer
Raymond Daddazio, P.E. President
Structural Engineering W. Steven Hofmeister, P.E., S.E. Managing Principal
Aine M. Brazil, P.E. Vice Chairman
Matthys P. Levy P.E., CEng, NAE, Hon. AIA
Weidlinger Protective Design Peter DiMaggio, P.E., SECB Senior Principal
Mid-Atlantic South U.S. R. Wayne Stocks, P.E. Managing Principal
Faรงade Engineering Sergio De Gaetano Dott. Ing., CEng Principal
Midwest U.S. Faz Ehsan, Ph.D., P.E. Managing Principal
Dennis C. K. Poon, P.E. Vice Chairman Joseph G. Burns, S.E., FAIA Managing Principal Bruce Gibbons, S.E., CEng Managing Principal W. Steven Hofmeister, P.E., S.E. Managing Principal Grant McCullagh GIBSCorp, LLC Gary F. Panariello, Ph.D., S.E. Managing Principal Tod Rittenhouse, P.E. Senior Principal Michael J. Squarzini, P.E. Managing Principal R. Wayne Stocks, P.E. Managing Principal Yi Zhu Managing Principal Board Advisor Robert P. DeScenza, P.E.
Weidlinger Transportation Samuel Summerville, P.E. Senior Principal Construction Engineering Darren R. Hartman, P.E. Principal Sustainability Gunnar Hubbard, FAIA, LEED Fellow Principal
Amy Hattan, LEED GA Vice President of Corporate Sustainability Robert L. Honig, Esq. General Counsel Stephanie Kelly Chief Human Resources Officer
West U.S. Bruce Gibbons, S.E., CEng Managing Principal
Jim Kent Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
Pacific Rim Yi Zhu Managing Principal
Steve Ross Chief Information Officer
Europe Joseph G. Burns, CEng, RIBA Managing Principal
Rimma Zaleznik, MBA, CPA Chief Financial Officer
Weidlinger Applied Science Najib Abboud, Ph.D., P.E. Senior Principal Forensics John Abruzzo, P.E. Managing Principal Property Loss Consulting Bruce K. Arita, AIA Senior Vice President Renewal Gary P. Mancini, P.E. Managing Principal Thornton Tomasetti 2016/2017 Annual Report
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Our Practices
In just five years, we’ve doubled the number of our practices. We diversify to advance two goals: delivering the best solutions for our clients and becoming the global driver of change and innovation in our industry. New services must integrate with existing offerings so they add real value when we perform multiple services on projects. A bigger toolkit means we can say yes to more clients. And adopting new disciplines expands the field for the interaction of ideas – a powerful catalyst for innovation.
Structural Engineering We collaborate with architects, building owners and builders to design elegant solutions for projects of all types, sizes and levels of complexity. From advanced structural analysis and optimization to performance-based design and acoustics consulting, our engineers focus on meeting – and exceeding – client needs. Weidlinger Protective Design As a recognized leader in physical security analysis, advice and design, we collaborate with team members to achieve appropriate solutions that uphold each project’s aesthetic, functional and budgetary goals. Façade Engineering Our façade consulting services include materials research, specialty analyses, detailed design, engineering and construction support, and glass and façade failure investigations. Weidlinger Transportation We provide multidisciplinary engineering expertise – in structural, civil and geotechnical engineering – for new and existing bridges and other transportation infrastructure. Construction Engineering We help designers, developers, contractors, fabricators and erectors move efficiently from concept to completion with integrated design and fabrication modeling, connection design, erection engineering, crane engineering, field engineering and site representation services. Sustainability We collaborate with clients and project partners to integrate an array of customized green solutions into building planning, design, construction and operation. Weidlinger Applied Science We undertake research, development and design to engineer practical solutions that manage risks to life and structures in military and civilian buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities and vehicles.
Property Loss Consulting Our architects, structural engineers and MEP experts help insurance clients analyze pre- and post-loss risks, damage, and property claims arising from natural or man-made perils. Renewal We assist owners and managers of existing structures with envelope, structural and MEP assessments, feasibility studies, peer reviews, and design for repairs, renovations and alterations.
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Design: Russell Design NYC
Forensics We provide attorneys, property managers, building owners, contractors/manufacturers and design professionals with a wide range of engineering and architectural forensic services.
“ Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.” – W. H. Auden Poet
“ A growing body of ecological research gives compelling evidence that biodiversity confers stability on ecosystems by buffering them against natural and artificial perturbations, and that it increases system productivity.” – Fraser Smith Stanford University Department of Biology
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Miami, Florida
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Austin, Texas
Mississauga, Canada
Beijing, China
Moscow, Russia
Boston, Massachusetts
Mumbai, India
Bristol, England
New York, New York – Madison Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
New York, New York – Wall Street
Christchurch, New Zealand
Newark, New Jersey
Cupertino, California
Ottawa, Canada
Dallas, Texas
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Denver, Colorado
Portland, Maine
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
San Diego, California
Edinburgh, Scotland
San Francisco, California
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
São Paulo, Brazil
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Seattle, Washington
Hong Kong, China
Shanghai, China
Irvine, California
Toronto, Canada
Kansas City, Missouri
Washington, DC
London, England – Farringdon
Wellington, New Zealand
London, England – Lloyd’s Avenue
West Hartford, Connecticut
Los Angeles, California
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