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Colleen Williams Joins Natural Gas Group
HRG Project Wins Statewide Award
Miller Joins the Land Development Group in Pittsburgh
Stover Joins HRG's Water & Energy Group
Jason Wert is Named a Shareholder
HRG Leaps Ahead on ENR Top 500 Design Firms List
HRG Wins Two Diamond Awards
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Williams joins HRG as a Sales Executive in the Gas Industry Division
(SEPTEMBER 2010) Colleen Williams has joined HRG as a sales executive promoting the firm’s services to the natural gas industry. As such, she will be responsible for developing relationships with clients in the natural gas industry, performing targeted marketing, and communicating with the public about the firm’s natural gas initiatives.
Williams earned her master’s degree in business administration from St. Francis University and holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from The Pennsylvania State University. She is a 2006 graduate of Leadership Centre County and participates in the United Way as a loaned executive, young leader, and funds distribution committee member. She also serves as an ambassador for the Chamber of Business and Industry in Centre County.
Williams has 10 years of experience in public relations, marketing and business development.
HRG Project Along Kohn Road Earns Statewide Honor
(AUGUST 2010) Susquehanna Township, a suburb of Harrisburg, Pa., has received a 2010 Road and Bridge Safety Improvement Award for its reconstruction of the Kohn Road corridor, a project that was designed by HRG. The Road and Bridge Safety Improvement Award is given annually by the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Commissioners, the Pennsylvania Highway Information Association, and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to recognize roadway and bridge projects undertaken by townships that greatly enhance vehicle and pedestrian safety in concert with long-term land use and growth planning.
Kohn Road exemplifies these twin goals beautifully. Originally designed as a two-lane rural roadway, Kohn Road was meant to carry local traffic only, but it had seen substantial increases in vehicle and pedestrian traffic over the years as Susquehanna Township had experienced significant growth. Unfortunately, the rural, two-lane roadway was not designed to handle this increased traffic volume safely, and Susquehanna Township had been attempting to acquire the funding to improve it for some time.
Along the Kohn Road corridor sat a 24-acre parcel zoned for commercial development that was ideally located adjacent to Interstate 81, a heavily traveled highway connecting major cities from New York to Tennessee. However, this prime piece of real estate had sat vacant for years due to the poor roadway access along Kohn Road.
The township desired to improve safety along Kohn Road and attract development that would increase tax revenues and provide jobs for its residents, so it entered into a Tax Increment Financing agreement with Szeles Capital Development Company in order to fund the roadway improvements and enable development to occur. Under this arrangement, the township would obtain a loan from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Bank to improve Kohn Road, making it viable for commercial development. Then the township, Susquehanna Township School District, and Dauphin County would agree to forego property tax on the parcel for 10 years, and Szeles would use the money he would’ve paid in property taxes to service Susquehanna Township’s loan instead.
With this arrangement in place, Susquehanna Township authorized HRG to upgrade Kohn Road’s design. Improvements included widening the roadway and installing a left turn lane, realigning the roadway and relocating obstructions such as trees and signs to improve visibility, adding sidewalks and implementing a pedestrian crossing, and properly controlling stormwater runoff. At the same time, Szeles initiated development of the 24-acre parcel adjacent to Interstate 81. Now known as the Capital Center, it includes one office building and a hotel with plans for three more office buildings and a restaurant in the works. When complete, the Capital Center will create approximately 950 jobs for the region, according to estimates.
Today, Kohn Road features improved safety and access and is positioned for future growth, meeting all state and federal highway standards for meeting traffic demands of up to 15,000 vehicles per day (three times its original traffic volume). Accidents have decreased dramatically along Kohn Road, as well. In just the first year of operation since construction, the accident rate has decreased from 4.25 crashes per million vehicles to 1.85 crashes per million vehicles, which forecasts a long-term crash rate reduction of 56%.
Local residents and business owners are pleased. “Kohn Road is much safer now,” says Raymond Sanzi of Sanzi Hair Design. “The turn is not near as severe. In the winter when making the turn, your car does not fishtail.”
Township Manager Gary Myers is pleased, as well. “This project has been a win-win for everyone. We were able to improve a roadway without increasing taxes for our residents and business owners, and we helped to create jobs for the area by enabling development of a property that had sad empty for years. Everyone involved – school district and county officials, the developer, the engineer and contractor – made this project a huge success.”
Miller Joins HRG’s Land Development Group
(JUNE 2010) HRG is pleased to announce that Keith Miller, RLA, has joined the firm’s Land Development Group as a project manager. In this capacity, he will be responsible for ensuring schedules, budgets and quality standards are met on a wide variety of land planning and site engineering projects for residential, commercial and industrial development projects throughout Western Pennsylvania.
Miller has a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from West Virginia University and has 13 years of experience in landscape architecture and site design. He is a former chairman of the City of Erie Planning Commission and a member of the Council of Landscape Architects Registration Board’s exam committee.
Stover Joins HRG’s Water & Energy Group
(JUNE 2010) HRG is pleased to announce that Charles Stover has joined the firm’s Water & Energy Group as a staff professional. In this capacity, he will be responsible for performing engineering studies and design computations as well as construction observation of water, wastewater, and environmental projects throughout the central region of Pennsylvania.
Stover is a 2010 graduate of the Pennsylvania College of Technology and has served as an intern with HRG since May 2008.
Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. Names New Shareholder
(MAY 2010) HRG has announced that Jason D. Wert, P.E., BCEE has been named a shareholder of the firm.
“Jason is a valued asset to both HRG and the clients he serves,” said company president Robert C. Grubic, P.E. “His exceptional technical and leadership skills have allowed Jason to rise to the top of his field and are attributes that play an integral role in our company’s continued success.”
As a shareholder, Wert will participate in ownership of the firm and will assume increased corporate management responsibilities. He will also continue to manage and oversee HRG’s most unique and challenging water and wastewater projects.
Mr. Wert is a senior project manager with HRG. His diverse experience includes design services related to water and wastewater treatment technologies, including Membrane Filtration, Biological Nutrient Removal, and the Anaerobic Digestion of biosolids for energy generation.
Mr. Wert earned his bachelor’s degree in Agriculture and Biological Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 1995, and is a registered professional engineer in five states. Mr. Wert also attained the distinction of being a Board Certified Environmental Engineer through the American Academy of Environmental Engineers.
HRG Leaps Ahead in Ranking of Nation’s Top 500 Design Firms
(MAY 2010) Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG) has again been named one of the top 500 design firms in the United States, according to Engineering News-Record magazine, moving up more than 50 spots from last year’s ranking. This is the firm’s 12th appearance on the list, which is compiled annually based on the revenue earned by engineering and architectural firms from design services performed in the preceding year.
“HRG is always honored to be recognized as one of the most successful firms in our industry by such an esteemed publication as Engineering News-Record,” said HRG President Robert Grubic, P.E., “but this year the recognition is especially sweet. Our employees have worked hard to maintain our success during such tough economic times, and this honor would not have been possible without them or the loyalty of our clients.”
American Council of Engineering Companies Honors Two HRG Projects
(FEBRUARY 2010) The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies has honored HRG with two 2010 Diamond Awards: for the Route 944 Underpass of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail and the Harrisburg Authority Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy Compliance Plan. The Diamond Awards recognize engineering achievements that demonstrate the highest degree of skill and ingenuity among member firms.
The Route 944 Underpass conveys hikers on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail underneath Route 944 (or Wertzville Road), a busy roadway in suburban Harrisburg that carries approximately 14,000 vehicles per day. This level of traffic had made it the most dangerous crossing of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in Pennsylvania, but it also created a challenge for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to improve without unduly impacting the drivers who travel this road daily. Further complicating this challenge was the local topography, which made it virtually impossible to construct a temporary roadway for drivers to use during construction. With the only viable detour stretching more than 20 miles, HRG suggested an innovative approach to construction in which the contractors from Hempt Bros., Inc. would close the road completely and work around the clock for 60 hours to build the structure over a holiday weekend when traffic would be lowest. Thanks to this construction approach and a design that carefully positioned the structure within the existing rock formation to avoid costly and time-consuming excavation, the project was constructed at a savings of 54% from the original project estimate. (View video of the underpass’s innovative construction approach.)
The Harrisburg Authority Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy Compliance Plan is the first example of a publicly owned wastewater treatment plant in Pennsylvania to adopt a plan combining construction with nutrient trading and the first to complete a public bidding for nutrient credits.
In creating the plan, HRG conducted a study of various alternatives in order to determine the most cost-effective approach to meeting nitrogen and phosphorus limits mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. These limits were set by DEP to improve the quality of water in the Chesapeake Bay, which is on the EPA’s list of impaired waters.
The study compared the costs of completely relying on the construction of treatment plant upgrades, completely relying on nutrient credit trading, or combining construction and trading to achieve compliance. It found that the combination of construction and trading would be the most cost-effective approach, reducing the capital construction costs by more than 53% and reducing the needed rate increase for the authority’s customers by 43%.
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