Merrick & Co. Chosen as Colorado Design Firm of the Year for 2015
Imagine life as one big science project.
Do that, and you've captured the essence of Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Merrick & Co., ENR Mountain States' Colorado/Wyoming Design Firm of the Year.
From helping to develop biofuel plants in Louisiana and India to designing nuclear containment facilities in New Mexico and Tennessee and creating agricultural research laboratories around the world, Merrick's engineers frequently blend basic science into their everyday engineering work.
"From the point of view of the engineers—the process and mechanical people—they enjoy stuff like that," says Dave Huelskamp, president and CEO of the 60-year-old, employee-owned company. "It challenges them every day to come up with new ideas on how to get things done cheaper or better and just having something exciting to work on every day."
Chris Sherry, Merrick's senior vice president and chief operating officer, offers two examples of intriguing projects, both involving biofuels, that the company is working on. The first, for Reliance Industries in India, under contract to Genifuel Corp., involves growing algae and processing it into jet fuel and other biochemicals through Merrick-designed refining facilities.
"It's really cool," Sherry says. "You can imagine for an engineer that's something you can really sink your teeth into. We kind of joke about it—it's like a science project. And who doesn't love a good science project?"
The second initiative may provide even greater professional satisfaction. A Merrick-designed plant in Louisiana is producing biofuels from wood chips through a pyrolysis process that leaves the chips charred after use. The resulting biocarbon is highly porous and absorbent, and turns out to be an excellent way to conserve irrigation water, Sherry says. Merrick's client, Cool Planet Energy Systems, recently donated several tons of the chips to drought-besieged California for the state to spread on the Capitol grounds in Sacramento and demonstrate the substance's water-retaining properties.
"It's a very green, environmentally conscious fuel-processing facility," Sherry says of the Cool Planet plant. "Not only do we get green gasoline out of it, but we have this by-product, a soil amendment that's actually helping conserve water. So our engineers are feeling, 'We're not just doing process engineering. We're also providing a product that's going to help in this drought that California's going through.'"
Purposeful Design
Such "engineering with a purpose" underlies Merrick's four business units—energy, national security, life sciences and sustainable infrastructure. Years ago, the company decided to focus on market segments where it had both passion and expertise. Merrick's results—$95.7 million in revenue in 2014, along with strong work force growth to 480 employees—speak to the success of the strategy.
"You can be Walmart or you can be Neiman Marcus, and you can be very successful at either end of the spectrum," observes Bob Berglund, senior vice president. "We tend more toward the Neiman Marcus model, where we are highly specialized. As an example, our life sciences business is recognized as being one of the world's leading experts in the design of high-containment animal research facilities. We do a lesser number of bigger projects and are continually successful at that because of the depth of the Merrick expertise."
Scientific know-how extends to Merrick's national security business unit, which serves both the U.S. military and the Dept. of Energy's nuclear research facilities in Los Alamos, N.M.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and other locations. Merrick works for all three branches of the Dept. of Defense and is currently designing a high-tech data center for cybersecurity; living quarters at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio; and a set of hangars for the Air Force's new KC-46 refueling planes. The DOE, meanwhile, has been a client for 25 years, relying on Merrick's knowledge of nuclear safety.
"We're kind of known as the people who design high-integrity containment facilities and systems for handling of radioactive material," Berglund says. "That is particularly valuable in the restoration and reconfiguration of the Manhattan Project-era facilities that are now being improved at both Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. We really take pains to understand systems that are based on a high degree of complexity and have to conform to very stringent nuclear quality-assurance controls and systems in order to produce facilities that are safe to operate."
As much as it focuses on the U.S. government, Merrick is now emphasizing private-sector and local and state government contracts. Huelskamp says the company at one time did about 75% of its business with the federal government; the current ratio is around 50/50.
Green Interaction
Much of the private-sector and local government work comes from Merrick's fourth business unit—sustainable infrastructure. Notable recent endeavors have included a two-mile-long environmental restoration project on the Chattahoochee River between Georgia and Alabama; computerized, airborne geomatic surveying for the Alyeska Pipeline in Alaska; and continuing design work for Coventry Development Corp.'s 3,500-acre RidgeGate residential and commercial real estate project in Lone Tree, Colo.
The "sustainable" in sustainable infrastructure comes through in a couple of ways. In addition to designing buildings and other facilities that are environmentally friendly, Merrick is proud of the way people interact with its projects. Sherry points to a white-water rafting course the company's McLaughlin Whitewater Design Group created as part of the Chattahoochee River project. Darryl Jones, vice president and development manager of Coventry Development Corp., points to something as simple and yet important as an aesthetically pleasing retaining wall that blends in with its surroundings at RidgeGate.
Coventry, like the military and the DOE, is another of Merrick's long-term clients. The company has done business with Merrick since 2006, and like Cool Planet, considers Merrick almost an extension of itself.
"They are very proactive," Jones says. "They understand from a development standpoint what we need—what are the issues we're going to encounter from the various jurisdictions and municipalities that we have to work with, whether it's the Army Corps of Engineers on drainage issues or working with the city engineering staff on street standards.
"They anticipate problems, which is very important in the development sector. You want to have as much certainty in the process as you can," Jones adds. "Based on their experience, they tend to anticipate issues that we might face. They really are an extension of our staff."
Randy Tucker, vice president of capital projects for Cool Planet, appreciates the flexibility that Merrick has exhibited toward an entrepreneurial client that is just bringing its product to the commercial stage.
"They've shown tremendous creativity and innovation in working with us," Tucker says. "One of the biggest challenges is that we're a startup. They're very schedule driven and cost conscious. We're not always that way. But they've stuck with us the whole way."
That's just part of the startup game, says Huelskamp, and it is a conscious part of the company's strategy—especially in biofuels, where Merrick has been a player for the past 15 years. "We're a mid-sized company," Huelskamp explains. "So we're flexible enough to say, 'Look, we can put 15 people on a project for two months, and then while you evaluate it, we'll come off the job, do something else, and get back with you.'
"We try to get ourselves in a position of what we call a trusted adviser," he adds. "We're not disinterested engineers just cranking out the numbers. We're advising them on technology, cost and schedule all the way through."
That kind of involvement is the sort of thing that keeps customers. Huelskamp himself regularly meets with clients to get a report card on how Merrick is doing. Based on what customers like Tucker and Jones are saying, this year's marks should be pretty high.
