News
Change at the Top
January 3, 2011
| Today, Lisa Brothers takes the reins of Boston's largest woman-owned engineering firm, Nitsch Engineering. As president and CEO, she'll stay the course that's landed her firm some of thearea's largest jobs (Liberty Mutual?s new $300M Back Bay HQ and the $3.5B Seaport Square), and made 2010 its best year. |
 |
| We snapped Lisa (left) and founder Judy Nitsch (who?ll remain as founding principaland chairman) packing files for the long-planned transition. Lisa has led the public sector jobs and Judythe private and institutional projects for 20 years. While so many in the industry struggled through last year, Nitsch grew its staff by 10%, generated $9M in revenues, and won a big (meaning price undisclosed) new NSTAR contract to kick off the new year. Lisa and Judy startedworking together at another firm in ?88. Then, when Judy announced she was going out on her own, Lisa said, ?Not without me.? |
 |
| Lisa may have new surroundings but plans to continue cultivating the civil engineering, land surveying, and permitting expertise that won them contracts for Equity Residential?s new West End Apartments project and the 10-year redevelopment of Jackson Square. Here?s Lisa with Paul LeBaron and John Schmid, who are working on several jobs, including the Liberty Mutual HQ where they're doing site design for everything outside the building walls: parking, grading, drainage, sewers, etc. For the eight-building Jackson Square project, they're surveying the 11-acresite and doing the engineering for the streets. Construction started last summer. |
 |
| Lisa hopes to take the firm in some new directions, however, including a greater focus on planning. Thus, we snapped her with the firm's new director of planning, Scott Turner, and head of the civil engineering department Gary Pease. Scott is one of nine newstaffers, bringing the head count to 69. Lisa?s also working on some targeted acquisitions to add complementary services (details pending deal closings). She'll expand laser scanning capabilities to do morework on historic preservation projects and grow the firm's sustainable site-consulting practice. She predicts 2011 will bump the staff nearer to 100. |
