Year-End Mergers announced Engineering firms poised for further national expansion

Schneider Electric, Paris, France, acquired Abacus Engineered Systems, a Seattle-based provider of facility energy and engineering solutions, with sales of approximately $30 million in 2003 and 86 employees.

Abacus provides building installations analysis, design, and post-construction services from its Seattle headquarters, as well as its offices in New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia, Massachusetts and Arizona. It specializes in sustainable design.

"We do traditional projects as well, but our expertise is in designing mechanical and electrical systems that are as efficient as possible," said Craig Williamson, Abacus president. "Our ability to do that, brought us global attention and makes us a good fit with Schneider."

Schneider is most known for manufacturing energy and infrastructure related equipment. A $13 billion company with offices in 130 countries, it is interested in acquiring firms similar to Abacus, with good reputations and sound financial footing, said Wes McDaniel, vice president of energy solutions, TAC Americas, Inc. Abacus now falls under the direction of a subsidiary, TAC Energy Solutions, based in Carrolton, Texas.

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Both Abacus and TAC Energy Solutions deliver energy performance and engineering solutions to the education sector, state and local governments, health facilities, the telecommunications industry, and the military. TAC Energy Solutions has a strong market presence in the southwestern, Midwestern, and the southeastern United States that complements the presence of Abacus in the northwestern, mid-Atlantic and northeastern regions.

Locally, Sparling, Seattle, the nation's largest specialty electrical engineering and technology consulting firm, has acquired the telecommunications engineering and consulting division of W&H Pacific, located in Portland. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Sparling bought the division to position itself for an even greater share of Portland's and Oregon's burgeoning technology-consulting business through its absorption of W&H Pacific's entire telecommunications client roster. W&H Pacific's telecom clients include PacifiCorp, one of the lowest-cost electricity producers in the country, the City of Portland, and various Indian tribes throughout the region.

"Now we are better situated for projects that involve the building interior, which Sparling already has the expertise to do and exterior telecommunications systems, which is the expertise of W&H Pacific." said Eric Overton, Sparling president.
An extensive cross training and education program between the two offices is already underway to further that goal, Overton said.

For example, W&H Pacific has designed and project managed the construction of a fiber optic network for the Coquille Indian Tribe in Coos Bay and North Bend, Ore., to provide rural communities with high-speed data and telecommunications services. Sparling engineers will now be better able to coordinate the systems

Sparling has traditionally focused on the design and deployment of electrical and technology systems for healthcare, commercial-office, higher education, retail and other industries. But with W&H Pacific's expert telecommunications staff now on board, Sparling expands its reach into the public sector as well as its own bandwidth for serving clients in a number of other vertical markets.

"There's always been a great deal of synergy between these companies, so combining our unique professional capabilities makes sense from every practical business perspective," stated Adam Haas, former vice president for telecommunications at W&H Pacific and newly named principal at Sparling.
According to Bill Jabs, principal-in-charge of W&H Pacific, telecommunications and technology have evolved to the point that the industry is now more aligned with electrical engineering and technology firms than civil engineering. "