In business, there are many milestones that warrant celebration. A contract with a brand new client is exciting. The completion of a project is satisfying. A long-time employee’s work anniversary is something to cheer. This year, however, marks a special milestone for Urban Engineers – our 60th year in business. To recognize this achievement, we are sharing the final of four blog posts to reflect on Urban’s work culture, the homegrown-approach to cultivating staff, employee dividends, and our vision for the future. Please read on to learn about who we are as an organization, and who we want to be in the years to come.

Our firm has taken the opportunity of our 60th anniversary to highlight our culture and look ahead to where we are going in the future. We are always looking to expand our business and enhance the services we are able to provide to our clients in new and innovative ways. We are also looking to improve our diversity, social responsibility, and how we can be better partners to our communities and future clients.

Improving Diversity

Urban values a diverse workforce. We believe that building a workforce through inclusion, acceptance, understanding, and respect of diverse cultures and backgrounds leads to the production of fresh ideas. It also provides personal and professional growth for our staff, and ultimately, better projects and service for our clients.

Urban is not only committed to providing equal employment opportunities, but to being a consciously diverse employer. To achieve this, we have taken many steps to attract more diverse talent, like changing the career events we attend, expanding our reach through minority- and women-focused publications that specialize in targeted recruitment campaigns, and involvement with organizations like Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) and the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO). Thanks to these efforts, the firm has seen an increase in diverse hires.

Social Responsibility

At Urban, we believe in actively maintaining the health and well-being of the neighborhoods in which we live and do business through community outreach. This is led by our talented and dedicated staff who volunteer their time to many organizations that promote the A/E/C industry and service minority communities. Urban contributes financially and offers the use of our office space to help these programs continue to do good work.

Urban also has a proud and significant history of developing solutions for complex challenges. Looking ahead, we as a firm want to continue our reputation as a steward of infrastructure. Our firm works to protect our nation’s transportation network and public spaces in a variety of ways. In addition to our design, planning, and construction support services - which touch all aspects of infrastructure projects - our environmental services team has helped transform blighted properties and aging infrastructure into livable, equitable, and sustainable community hubs. We have also enabled construction to occur safely and efficiently in locations that were once deemed infeasible for new development or reuse.

Future Partners

We at Urban work with our clients through collaboration and communication in order to fully understand projects so that we can successfully deliver on their goals. We understand exactly how we do our work, and this results in a standard for excellence – as well as measurable maintenance and improvement – in our client communications and overall project management. Heading into our future, we want to strengthen the bonds with the clients we have worked with, and align ourselves with future clients who share our goals. We also plan to foster and continue community partnerships that help move our world forward.

Urban has long supported DBE firms, and not just because teaming can be a contract requirement. Our firm supports them because it is crucial to our profession, our peers, and our principles. We have strong ties to the DBE community and have mentored and helped those DBE firms grow through our work with them. We share many of our clients’ goals to create opportunities for these businesses and look for like-minded new partners.

If there is anything to take away from the events of the recent past, it is the importance of valuing people. Urban’s top priority has always been to protect the safety and wellness of our staff. The challenges faced by our firm and our country have only highlighted this priority. The firm is determined to provide suitable and sustainable working environments for employees and give them the resources they need to support themselves and their families. This has enabled us to maintain competitiveness in challenging environments and pave the way for forthcoming success. In seeking out future partners, we anticipate to team with organizations who do the same for their staff.