Floyd Snider McCarthy

Specialty: Strategic planning and technical support for property cleanup and redevelopment, natural resource and conservation planning
Principals: Kate Snider, Teri Floyd, Dan McCarthy, Alan Wolfson
2001 revenues: N/A
2002 project revenues: N/A
Location: Seattle

Snider

At Floyd Snider McCarthy, the more things change the more they stay the same.

With the additions of Dan McCarthy and Alan Wolfson, the environmental consulting firm has doubled its cadre of principals in just two years.

McCarthy, a chemical engineer, and Wolfson, a land-use expert, haven’t changed the firm’s focus, according to Principal Kate Snider. “But it does broaden the range of experience (we have),” she said.

The firm handles contamination and permitting issues for clients evenly divided between the public and private sectors, including private businesses, municipalities, developers and port authorities. The common thread, Snider explained, is that her clients are generally land owners. “We never work for regulatory agencies for enforcement purposes,” she said.

The firm’s largest project right now is the Todd Pacific Shipyard Superfund cleanup on Harbor Island. As the lead consultant, Floyd Snider McCarthy is planning the remediation of marine sediments, soil and groundwater at the 30-acre ship repair and construction facility.

“I think the thing that’s unique about the Todd Pacific project is that it’s a Superfund project in a fast-paced business environment,” Snider said. “Construction phasing is going to be pretty intricate.”

In contrast, she said, most Superfund sites have been abandoned or are in transition.

The busy Todd Pacific site — the largest private shipyard in the Northwest, according to Snider — is on a fast track for the cleanup. “We expect to reach closure with the (Environmental Protection Agency) on remedial action by fall, and start remedial action by October of 2003,” she said. “The project is definitely in the design process now.”

Working with Floyd Snider McCarthy on the project are Windward Environmental, KPFF Consulting Engineers, Taylor Associates, PanGEO and Lofgren Imagineering.

Though it has a staff of 22 with wide-ranging expertise, Floyd Snider McCarthy takes a team approach to its work, assembling firms that fit the project at hand. “Because all of these projects are both very complex and very site-specific and client-specific in their needs, we feel our clients’ needs are best met if we reach out to all of the consulting firms in the region as potential teaming partners,” Snider said.

Two major projects the firm completed this year include a wood-debris cleanup of the Hylebos Waterway in Tacoma and the redevelopment of an Everett landfill, which will put an inner-city brownfield to new use.

Snider said her firm’s biggest challenge is designing to address complex projects where multiple regulatory demands overlap. “That’s always our biggest challenge, is to craft an approach to each project individually,” she said.