| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Technical Services |
| Headquarters | Edmonton, Alberta, Canada |
| Key people | Bob Gomes |
| Employees | 10,000+ (2009)[1] |
| Website | www.stantec.com |
Stantec Inc. (TSX: STN, NYSE: STN) is a Canadian professional services company and one of the leading firms in the design and consulting industry. Founded in 1954, Stantec provides planning, engineering, architecture, project management and other related services to its clients. It employs more than 10,000 people in more than 150 offices across North America, the UK, the UAE, and India. Its corporate headquarters are located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
In 1998, Stantec executives set an ambitious target to surpass $1 billion in annual gross revenue, a goal the company reached. Stantec increased gross revenue from CDN $185.5 million in 1998 to CDN $816.1 in 2006. In 2006 alone, gross revenue rose 32.1 percent. Gross annual revenue for 2009 was CDN $1.52 billion, up 12.4 percent.
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Stantec’s founder, Don Stanley, was the first Canadian to earn a Ph.D. in environmental engineering. Attending Harvard University on a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship, he earned his doctorate in 1952 and two years later founded D.R. Stanley & Associates, working as the sole proprietor out of a 250-square-foot (23 m2) office in Edmonton, Alberta (across the street from Stantec’s current multi-story head office). Thanks to the discovery of oil in Alberta in 1947, the provincial government had funds available for small communities to develop more sophisticated water and sewer systems. “Nobody else was bothering with these smaller communities,” Stanley recalled.
In 1955 Stanley hired a retired railway engineer, Herb Roblin, and a former chief bridge engineer for the provincial government, Louis Grimble. The firm was renamed Stanley, Grimble and Roblin Ltd. With the two new partners’ transportation backgrounds, the firm diversified quickly, with project including two major transportation studies for the City of Edmonton and construction management of a new bridge over the Peace River in British Columbia. In 1963 Roblin retired and Stanley bought Grimble’s shares. The company became Stanley Associates Engineering Ltd. with close to 30 employees.
The 1970s were boom years for Stanley Associates, but with the advance of the sharp recession of the 1980s, Stanley was ready to turn the company over to his second-in-command, Ron Triffo, in 1983. Holding a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Manitoba and a MSc in Engineering from the University of Illinois, Triffo began his career as project director for the Winnipeg Area Transportation Study at another firm. The study was one of the first in Canada to use computers to simulate urban systems. “I was a young person in the forefront of computer technology, and consequently I found myself in increasingly responsible positions at a very early age,” Triffo recalls.
Triffo joined Stanley Associates as Vice President of Transportation in 1977. “My recollection is that the company had about 150 people, with a head office in Edmonton and operations in Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George and Calgary,” said Triffo. “We were also doing work in Saskatchewan and in the Northwest Territories, and we had one or two jobs in the Caribbean. Stanley Associates had a reputation as a ‘drip and drain’ company that did a lot of work for small municipalities in Alberta. I came into the company to build up the transportation and urban development practices.”
In 1980 Triffo beacme vice president of the Northern Region, including northern Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon. In 1983, when Alberta’s economy was struggling in response to the Canadian government’s National Energy Program, Triffo became president and COO, while Stanley retained his role as CEO and chair. “We had cut our staff in half from 400 to about 200,” Triffo said. “We really started to think about a new way of doing things for the company. We were heavily involved in Alberta in a big, big way and therefore very vulnerable to the up and down cycles of the province. We decided we had to diversify the company in a discipline sense. We had to become more than just a civil engineering company and we had to diversify geographically.”
But the strength of Stanley Associates’ civil engineering practice hampered diversification, and clients were reluctant to believe the firm could do anything other than sewer, water and road projects. The company responded by forming an urban development company under another name, IMC, which grew to 200 people. The diversification of Stanley Associates occurred by acquisition as well. The firm expanded into British Columbia and Saskatchewan and internationally, beginning a corporate move into central Canada. Stanley also made its first U.S. acquisition, in Phoenix, established a base for specialty services and future expansion in the US Southwest.
Following the success of IMC, Stanley Associates’ various practices operated under boutique names, with as many as 20 different companies. By the early 1990s, the companies were placed under the umbrella of Stanley Technology Group, and most subsidiaries featured the name Stanley in their name. Staff numbers neared 900 and the firm went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1994.
In 1998, Triffo stepped into the role of board chair, where he remains as of 2010. Tony Franceschini, then vice president of the Commercial/Institutional sector and a Board member, became president and CEO. Franceschini had already been with the company for 20 years. Franceschini began his career with a consulting engineering firm in Toronto, Ontario, in 1975 after graduating from the University of Waterloo with a degree in civil engineering, where he worked with Triffo. He followed Triffo to Stanley in 1977 and seven years later was involved in one of the company’s first acquisitions, Pavement Management Systems, under the company’s new diversification strategy.
The year Franceschini became president and CEO, Stantec had 2,000 employees in 40 offices and reported $185.5 million in gross revenue. “Our vision is to grow the company into a 10,000 employee, billion-dollar firm by 2008,” Franceschini said. Franceschini was instrumental in launching the new global, single-brand identity, Stantec, which enabled the company’s services to be delivered through an integrated approach. “The move was a major achievement –– in a two-month period, we sought and received shareholder approval to change the name of over 30 companies,” says Franceschini. Architecture and interior design were added to the company’s services in 1998, forming a practice area that would grow to number more than 700 staff.
Stantec was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005. Franceschini retired in 2008 but remains on the Stantec Board. Bob Gomes was appointed president and CEO. Like the Stantec’s previous three presidents, Gomes is a licensed engineer. He earned his degree in civil engineering from the University of Alberta and joined Stantec in 1988 and in 1991 he was appointed principal engineer in charge of the Edmonton office. In 1998, he was appointed vice president of the Edmonton Urban Land group of Stantec. Gomes led that group to become the largest and most successful land development firm in Edmonton. In 1999, Gomes was appointed vice president of Alberta North, Stantec’s largest region, and was responsible for all Stantec activities in the Edmonton office and in northern Alberta. In 2005, Gomes became senior vice president for the Industrial & Project Management group. By 2007, Gomes had more than doubled the revenues of that group and has made it one of the fastest growing practice areas within Stantec.
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