The largest environmental consultants operating in Orange County managed to hold steady in local business last year.
The 32 largest companies here combined for a gain of $787,000 in billings for environmental work completed by their OC offices last year.
That brings the total to $572 million, unchanged from a year earlier, according to the Business Journal list. The list ranks companies by the amount of local billings for the 12 months ending in December 2011, with the exception of one company, whose figures represent 12 months through September 2011.
Last year’s flat total followed a 7.4% gain in local billings in 2010, when the industry rebounded from a 12% drop in 2009.
Mixed Outcome
At least 14 companies on this week’s list saw billings grow in 2011, while 11 marked declines, and one reported flat billings. Figures listed for six other companies were based on Business Journal estimates and are shown as flat with 2010 billings.
The top three companies maintained the same pecking order as in the previous year’s list. A handful of companies shuffled around the bottom half of the list, primarily due to weaker business.
The Santa Ana office of Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M Hill Cos. had a $16 million increase in local billings, to $161.5 million, to keep the No. 1 spot. The 11% growth here was in line with the companywide increase for the same period.
The company added seven employees over the past year in Orange County for a total of 306.
The gap between CH2M’s total and No. 2 San Francisco-based URS Corp. was about $100 million.
Not counting CH2M’s $16 million increase, the rest of the companies on the list would have seen a 3% drop in business completed by their OC offices.
URS Corp. saw billings at its Santa Ana office drop by $7 million to $60 million, down 10.5%. Companywide billings fell 1.2%.
URS cut its employee count here by 31 after adding 40 a year earlier. It now has 305 workers in OC.
Aecom
The Orange office of Los Angeles-based Aecom Technology Corp. fell three spots to No. 7 on the list after its billings declined by 36%, to $21.5 million, over the 12 months ended September 2011.
Aecom had a 25% jump in OC billings a year earlier. It did better elsewhere last year, with companywide billings up 14.4% to $1.8 billion.
The Irvine office of Edmonton, Canada-based Stantec Consulting Services Inc. fell 13 places to No. 32 on the list with the biggest percent decline in billings.
The local unit’s billings in 2011 totaled $2.5 million, about a third of its 2010 total of $7.7 million. Meantime, the company added 11 employees here last year and now employs 108 people.
“We added 11 OC employees when the staff of traffic firm Austin-Foust Associates joined Stantec in September 2011,” Stantec’s spokesperson Liz Nathanson said. “Our local transportation practice has grown significantly in the past year and a half.”
The growth for that segment is not reflected in the total billings for the company’s environmental work.
There were newcomers to the list:
• No. 12 Santa Ana-based Chambers Group Inc. saw its billings rise 34% to $11.6 million. The company has 88 employees here, up from 62 a year earlier.
About 38% of Chambers’ total business in 2011 was done by the OC unit. Chambers has four other offices in California and one in Nevada.
“We used to do quite a bit of work for developers, but when they started going downhill, we went out specifically to look for new marketplaces,” Chief Executive Sherman Smith said. “We do a lot of biological assessment work. An area that worked very well was working for utilities on construction and transportation projects.”
• The Brea office of No. 24 Burns & McDonnell Corp. saw its Orange County business more than triple—to $7 million from $2 million a year earlier—marking the biggest percentage growth on the list. The Kansas City, Mo.-based company opened the Brea office in July 2010. It added 23 people in its OC office for a total of 62 last year.
“We are currently projecting we will double our staff by 2015 with our current and future projects,” Renita Mollman, who leads the OC and San Diego offices of Burns & McDonnell, told the Business Journal in an interview last year.
Burns & McDonnell saw a 35% growth in its companywide environmental business in 2011.
Leighton’s Debut
• No. 27 Irvine-based Leighton Consult-ing Inc. debuted on this year’s list with $3.1 million in OC billings, up 5% from a year earlier.
The company’s Irvine office bucked a companywide decline in overall business. Leighton has eight other offices throughout Southern California, including San Diego and Temecula. The company saw a 3.3% drop in companywide environmental billings, down to $5.9 million.
It has 75 employees in its Irvine office, unchanged from 2010.
__–
Download the 2012 OC’s LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS list (pdf)
