Engineering success | Jon Christensen, CFO, Kleinschmidt Associates, Pittsfield
Amber Waterman
Jon Christensen, chief financial officer of environmental consulting firm Kleinschmidt Associations, stands near the Penobscot River, the site of current restoration work
That recessions breed opportunity is an old business axiom, and Kleinschmidt Associates, an energy and natural resource consulting firm based in Pittsfield, has shown how it can work.
Jon Christensen — who joined the firm in 1987, was promoted to department head and is now CFO — traces the success of that strategy back to 1995, when Kleinschmidt opened its first office outside Maine, in South Carolina.
Since then, the company has opened seven more offices along the East Coast, loosely defined from Maine to Alabama, and most recently in Wisconsin and Portland, Ore. “We have the services that allow us to expand, and we need to have our feet on the ground in those places,” Christensen says.
The geographic diversification has allowed Kleinschmidt to grow steadily through economic contraction and expansion, from 84 employees and $6 million in revenue in 2000 to 125 employees and $15 million in revenue in 2011.
But an equally important reason for the growth was its decision, just over a decade ago, to move beyond the paper companies and utilities that had been the backbone of its customer base. Amid a paper industry slump around the turn of the century, Kleinschmidt decided to engage with some of the government officials and NGOs that are often on the other side of disputes about hydroelectric projects and river restoration.
The decision, in retrospect, was necessary to keep the company growing, but it wasn’t easy, internally or externally.
“It was really hard for people here to get used to the idea that we were going to work for groups that had opposed projects our clients built,” he says. “It was a huge psychological change” for the company to be working on “the other side of the table,” with groups such as Trout Unlimited and American Rivers.
Convincing the NGOs took time, too. “We started going to trade shows and conferences to show what we could do,” he says. Gradually, there were talks, and ultimately, contracts.
Currently, Kleinschmidt is working with what would once have been opposing sides in the mammoth Penobscot River Restoration project. It represents both the dam owner, Black Bear Hydro (formerly PP&L) and the Penobscot Trust, a coalition of conservation groups.
While the parties worked out much of the plan to remove some dams and expand generating capacity on others, it certainly didn’t hurt that their mutual consulting firm was Kleinschmidt, producing an agreed-upon data base and common analysis. “It is a way to build trust,” Christensen says.
A project Christensen has worked on himself has become a particular favorite of his — restoration of Atlantic salmon. It started with contention between the state and federal government over an endangered species listing, but has evolved into a largely cooperative effort to protect the habitat of the salmon’s last American breeding ground.
“We were able to take some contentious issues, such as buffer zones around streams for logging, to come up with rules that worked for both sides.” The result, he says, should be sustainable cutting that provides enough shade for salmon while preventing erosion.
The salmon project began with statewide listening sessions, moved on through the applied science of stream ecology and ended with Kleinschmidt selling the compromises to loggers and conservationists.
What Kleinschmidt terms its water resources division now accounts for 20% of revenues, and that’s expected to grow. With salmon, for instance, “the next big challenge is offshore,” Christensen says. “We’ve done a good job with the rivers and land-based habitat issues. But the ocean environment is the next big challenge.”
The company, founded by hydro engineer Steve Kleinschmidt in 1966, is committed to remaining Maine-based. “Over half our employees still work in the Pittsfield office,” says Christensen. “We’re proud to provide jobs in a part of Maine that really needs them.”
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