Dallas scanning services should get a boost from Woolpert hardware
DALLAS—Design, engineering, and geospatial firm Woolpert announced this week it will acquire the operations here in Dallas of Bohannan Huston, a spatial data, mapping, civil engineering and advanced engineering technology services firm headquartered in Albuquerque. Woolpert, based in Dayton, Ohio, gains geographical presence in Texas and, especially, a long-standing relationship with Texas Department of Transportation. Bohannan Huston will focus on expanding its business in New Mexico and Colorado.
“Our laser scanning expertise, the TexDOT laser scanning, all the other projects we’ve been involved with over the last seven years for Bohannan Huston, that will transfer over to Woolpert,” said Brad Adams, in an interview with the SPAR 3D. Adams will move from his role with BH to assume a VP position with Woolpert.
Adams noted that Eric Andelin, operations manager for the BH Dallas office, is a leading thinker in the mobile LiDAR space, and that the Dallas office’s work with Texas DOT has been extensive. In 2004, the company completed the downtown Dallas roadway scanning project known as Pegasus, and the company has scanned 700 bridges for the Fort Worth arm of the DOT, and 20 miles of IH-20 for the Amarillo office.
“We’ve been doing terrestrial scanning for large government agencies around Dallas for many, many years,” Adams noted, “with a lot of intricate projects.”
The Pegasus project, for example, was chosen as the opening keynote for the first-ever SPAR conference in 2004.
The primary change in operations going forward, when Woolpert takes over the Dallas office in February, said Adams, will come from Woolpert’s in-house scanning hardware. “Now we’re with an organization with acquisition resources,” he said. “When you’re trying to go with mobile LiDAR without having a mobile system under your umbrella—that was extremely difficult.”
Where Bohannan Huston had to sub-contract out such services, Woolpert has both mobile scanning and aerial LiDAR systems in-house.
“We believe we’ll benefit from that under the new company,” Adams said.
Woolpert has approximately 650 employees and 22 offices.
Bohannan Huston has been in business for more than 50 years and employs 170 staff in its Albuquerque, NH, headquarters and Denver and Las Cruces branch offices.
In a press release, BH president Brian Burnett said the company has a long history in New Mexico and Colorado, and, “We want to focus on expanding that success into the Rocky Mountain region and western U.S. He also noted, “Woolpert and Bohannan Huston’s successful partnership on previous projects provides us with an in-depth understanding of how our companies’ services and cultures complement one another. Woolpert and Bohannan Huston have had strong professional ties for many years and we look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.”
