Thornton Tomasetti has acquired Portland, Maine-based Fore Solutions, a seven-employee, green building consulting firm, for an undisclosed sum. The acquired firm will become Thornton Tomasettis’ new Building Sustainability practice, which will expand the engineering firm’s footprint in the green building sector.
The acquisition enables Thornton Tomasetti to “address the sustainability requirements for any client and any project of any scale,” says Joseph Burns, Thornton Tomasetti managing principal. About half of new construction nationwide is expected to incorporate some measure of sustainability by 2015, the firm says.
“This is a dramatic expansion of our commitment to sustainability at Thornton Tomasetti,” Burns says. The engineering firm launched a Green Building Strategy Team in 2007 and began to offer sustainability services and perform sustainability project work in 2010.
The new Building Sustainability practice will be headed by Gunnar Hubbard, Fore Solution’s principal and founder. Hubbard will become a principal at Thornton Tomasetti, and the Fore Solutions team will remain in Maine. Thornton Tomasetti will keep Fore Solution’s management in place. Wolfgang Werner, the former director of sustainability at Thornton Tomasetti will become a vice president and head of the practice’s East United States region.
This is the first acquisition for Thornton Tomasetti since February 2009 when it acquired San Francisco-based DASSE Design, Inc., a structural engineering firm.
Other industry acquisitions in the last six months include London-based consultancy firm Turner & Townsend’s purchase last October of Ferzan Robbins & Associates, a N.Y.-based project management and services firm; and Boston-based Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc.’s acquisition last September of Eng-Wong, Taub & Associates, a New York City and Newark, N.J.-based transportation planning, traffic engineering, and research firm.
