ESA Adolfson

Specialty: SEPA and NEPA compliance, natural resource evaluation, water resource management, policy and planning work
Management: Gary Oates, CEO; Lloyd Skinner, NW regional manager; Molly Adolfson, vice president
Founded: 1969 (ESA)
Headquarters: San Francisco (ESA); ESA Adolfson NW regional offices in Seattle, Olympia and Portland
2007 revenues: $39 million
Projected 2008 revenues: $42 million
Current projects: Program management for the Puget Sound Partnership Action Agenda; lead for the Columbia River Water Management EIS and the supplemental EIS for the Lake Roosevelt Incremental Storage Release Program; shoreline management program updates for several cities and counties; facilitation of Ecology’s Mitigation that Works Forum



Molly Adolfson

Molly Adolfson, vice president of ESA Adolfson, said the company’s projects in the Pacific Northwest are changing. They’re becoming more integrated, higher profile and a lot more exciting.

“It seems like most projects are high-profile these days. It doesn’t seem to me that there are low-profile projects anymore,” she said.

That’s due to increased public and client awareness, and more interest in how different systems interact with each other. One high-profile project ESA is working on is project management for the Puget Sound Partnership.

The partnership is developing an action plan to clean up Puget Sound, and is using forums of experts to help determine key problems and opportunities. ESA organizes those forums. It’s exciting, Adolfson said, because there are a lot of different facets and opinions involved. But it’s a challenge because opinions need to be scientifically documented. “It’s really a kind of career-capping sort of (project),” she said.

Slowing economy

Photo by Cathie Conolly/ESA Adolfson
ESA Adolfson is providing program management to the Puget Sound Partnership, which is developing an action plan to clean up the sound.

ESA is increasingly busy with projects it won last year, but the economy is affecting future projects because there is a decrease in the volume of contract opportunities and more competition. “We’re seeing firms start turning out for all different (project) sizes and contracts that in the past, they might not have gone for,” she said.

The environmental industry has also seen tremendous growth over the past few years that Adolfson predicts will slow in the fall. Still, there are fields that she expects ESA will continue to grow, such as water resources and biological resources work.

To combat a slowing economy, ESA is also looking at leveraging its existing capabilities with those fields that are emerging. For example, it’s moving more into helping clients work through sustainable issues such as doing evaluations of current practices and future sustainable planning.

ESA is also looking at this area in its own offices and has had to take “a hard look” at its work practices. But Adolfson said a problem surfaces in the definition of “sustainability.”

“It’s not well-defined yet how you fit into this,” Adolfson said. “I think that’s still evolving.”

Adolfson expects the definition of sustainability to get clearer as companies realize being more sustainable will save money.






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