Northern environmental niche.

• Author: Holland, Jonathan
• Position: Nortech Environmental and Engineering Consultants of Fairbanks - 1994 Environmental Services - Company Profile

Nortech Environmental and Engineering Consultants of Fairbanks brings frontier innovation to Far North engineering and environmental challenges.

From hand-turned ivory outboard motor parts to the 90-mile Davidson ditch carved out of the foothills above Fairbanks, Alaska has always been home to a hardy breed of pioneer innovators, able to build what they needed if it was not readily available.

That spirit of frontier innovation lives on today in businesses like Nortech Environmental and Engineering Consultants of Fairbanks.

Nortech has grown from a one-man show a dozen years ago to a $750,000-a-year business today by using new technology and project-specific teams of engineers to solve thorny problems in the modern jungle of environmental regulation and community concerns. Nortech founder John Hargesheimer, P.E., believes that the breadth and complexity of issues involved in environmental projects requires a new management style.

"There are three components of an environmental project: emotional, technical and political," he says. "You need to use a holistic approach. A project is not linear. We are goal-oriented, not process-oriented. The goal defines the answers. We like to start the goal and work back through the answers."

Hargesheimer says local communities affected by a project need, and usually desire, to be involved in its planning. Failure to include the community is nearly certain to inspire opposition that raises a project's costs.

"You have to market a technical solution just like any other idea in business," he says.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

A good consulting engineering firm must offer a multidisciplinary approach to projects, says Hargesheimer. Consequently, the best environmental engineer is a jack-of-all-trades.

"Environmental engineering is still a maturing discipline. The best type of environmental engineer has diverse experience," he says. "I often counsel young people interested in the field that they are better off not to focus on any one discipline."

Hargesheimer describes the staff of Nortech as a mixed bag. His crew includes an economist, a hydrologist, a surveyor, a geologist and a risk-analysis specialist, as well as roughly a dozen assorted engineers and technicians. In addition to his team of staffers, he is proud of the chain of professional resources he has pulled together that allows him to call on specific expertise for various projects.

"We've developed professional relationships, much like that overused...