Penfield & Smith has been expanding since it opened in Santa Barbara in 1946. The civil engineering firm now has 90 employees and offices in Santa Maria, Camarillo, and Lancaster, serving customers from San Luis Obispo County to Los Angeles County.
Hady Izadpanah, the company’s president and CEO, said the company is poised to grow even more with North American design firm Stantec, which signed a letter of intent in August to acquire Penfield & Smith. He added that Stantec’s global network would enhance the way Penfield serves the Central Coast, as well as create new experiences for its employees.
“We’re really excited about it; it gives us the opportunity to grow,” Izadpanah said. “We’re going to be even stronger. … We’ll have a lot of opportunities to be able to serve our customers better.”
Stantec currently has 14,000 employees in 230 different locations, 6,500 of those employees work across the United States, with 1,000 in California—mostly located in Southern California. The company specializes in professional consulting across industries for planning, engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics.
“California is an important market for our firm, and Penfield & Smith strengthens our community development presence in the state with talented practitioners that share our passion for serving clients through exceptional work,” said Stantec President and CEO Bob Gomes in a press release. “In addition to supporting our Central Coast capabilities, Penfield & Smith will also complement our operations in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.”
The press release from Stantec touts Penfield & Smith’s accomplishments on the Central Coast, which include the 135-acre master-planned marina community of Seabridge at Channel Islands Harbor; two retail centers and more than 700 work units and personal residences in Oxnard; the redesign of a 1.3-mile, two-lane rural hillside road to enhance drainage and lane width; and construction management for converting the 40-million gallon, open-air Sheffield Reservoir into below-ground water storage facilities with a public park above.
Izadpanah said Penfield is proud of the heritage it’s built on the Central Coast and that the way the company serves the community isn’t going to change. He pointed out that Santa Maria has been a huge growth market for them, and it’s continuing to expand.
Penfield & Smith has been in Santa Maria since 2001, and will soon be moving out of its offices on East Enos Drive to a larger space on Santa Maria Way because it’s outgrown its current space.
That desire and ability to expand its customer base is something that unites the two companies, and Izadpanah said the merger-acquisition is the right fit for both.
“They want to grow in California, and we want to grow,” Izadpanah said. “It seemed like good timing to combine forces.”
The deal is expected to close sometime in October.
Managing Editor Camillia Lanham wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Sep 4-11, 2014.
