State of the Environmental
Consulting Industry

Many of our clients comment “your business must be good with all those regulations and compliance responsibilities for your clients to maintain.” Actually our firm continues to perform very well, but our industry is rapidly consolidating. During the middle to late 1990’s, the drafting of new regulations has ceased, budget constraints have restricted agency enforcement, a diminished environmental advocacy has grown in the public forum and client sophistication has increased dramatically.

During the rapid growth of our industry in early 1990’s, it was common place for firms to open branch offices to gain geographic market share and to meet the demand driving the marketplace. It is easy to take those actions in a growing market; however, when the growth slows or ceases, the debt service will overcome your cash flow. As a result, the middle market size firms in our industry have significantly downsized, merged, or gone out of business to where a three tiered market now exists: the boutique firm, less than 50 staff; the large firm with approximately 500 to 750 staff; and the mega firm with over 5,000 staff.

In this market consolidation, numerous clients have suffered through staff turn over, multiple project managers and consulting firms’ cultures being lost as they merge to survive. Many clients have expressed frustration in “bringing another person up to speed on my project”. Interestingly, our second opinion work has increased dramatically in recent years because our client base expects timely solutions to their problems. In addition, they are tired of the consultant's inability to economically solve the issue.

As most of you know, our firm has always had a single office to serve our national client base. We were tempted to establish branch offices, but felt that may be in conflict with our commitment to provide quality and timely service, focussing on what the client needs, not what we are “selling that week”. Staff continuity has been a key to our success. We have grown cautiously and are debt free. We are now at a time and place when growth opportunities abound in our market.

We rely on consistent contacts with clients to learn about their industry trends and future, from which we identify needs. As our clients’ needs change we must change also, if we are to maintain their business. We are now embarked on a series of Growth Initiatives that are in the execution phase in 1999. We have taken our technical skill set and matched the current and future needs in the marketplace. These include expansion of core business services including asbestos/lead paint and industrial hygiene; Brownfields Redevelopment; and Site Remediation Design, Installation and Management. In addition, we have formed a new joint venture to provide a bioremediation product for chlorinated solvents in soil and groundwater. To accomplish these growth initiatives we have added new personnel to our staff to enhance our technical and management skill sets. We continually strive to meet the expectations of our clients. We find ourselves in very exciting times, with many opportunities. We welcome any thoughts or comments from you on this or any matter involving our services. Please contact John Payne at 513.489.2255 or through e-mail at jlp@paynefirm.com.