From the Ground Up Hanover Engineering Firm Lays Foundations for Growth

By MARC SHAPIRO Staff Writer

Dave Patron never thought he’d become a geotechnical engineer.

He didn’t even know such jobs existed when he got into the business in 1982, seeking to become a planning engineer.

“What I found was I’d have to go to school forever,” he said.

After an unsuccessful start as a surveyor, he found himself in 1995 in the role of geotechnical engineer evaluating ground conditions for buildings at Engineering Consulting Services in Hanover. Today, he is vice president of an expanding company that has an early say in some of the area’s biggest developments.

“I never pictured being an engineer and (also) interacting with people,” he said.

ECS Limited LLC, which employs about 1,100 people, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The company started in Chantilly, Va., and now has 34 offices in the Carolinas, Illinois, Texas, Florida and other parts of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, each area being divided into its own company.

The Hanover office, which was recently expanded by 20,000 feet, employs 72 people. There are eight more technicians working in the company’s Ocean City satellite office.

The company provides a variety of services, including geotechnical engineering, environmental consulting, construction materials testing and facilities consulting. ECS can monitor and engineer many aspects of a construction project from beginning to end.

ECS’s Hanover office recently hired a few engineering technicians and construction-materials testing technicians. The company plans to hire about five more this summer and is looking to hire a professional engineer and entry-level project manager.

Gustavo Arango, vice president and project director of Greenberg Gibbons Commercial Corp., said his company has used ECS for geotechnical testing and engineering and environmental consulting of the Annapolis Town Center at Parole. He said geotechnical engineers are key players in the beginning of a project.

“They do the initial legwork in understanding what the soil conditions are,” he said. “That drives the engineering of all the buildings.”

At the start of a project, ECS’s environmental department does an environmental survey of the land to check for potential environmental problems. The geotechnical engineers evaluate ground conditions to determine the most effective type of foundation for the project. The company does this for anything that is built on the ground, including roadways.

The engineers then do a study for the design of the ground foundation. The materials department can monitor this construction and make sure it meets the company’s specifications.

“The results of our study may save them hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Mr. Patron.

For buildings that already exist, the facilities department assesses property conditions. The assessments determine what structural and visible internal features of the building need improvement before it can be sold.

“We call it our forensics department,” said Mr. Patron.

ECS’s services have been used by a variety of large projects in the county. The company did construction materials testing for Arundel Preserve, a 268-acre mixed used development in the BWI- Washington Business Corridor.

The company also has performed environmental consulting, geotechnical engineering and construction materials testing for the BWI Hotel, Residence Inn at Arundel Mills and a new office building on Aviation Boulevard. The company also did construction monitoring and testing for one of the daily parking garages at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport and the new Marriott Hotel in Baltimore.

“If there’s no problems with the building, hopefully we’ll never see a project again,” said Mr. Patron.

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