ADI Ltd. joins national firm
Published Tuesday November 24th, 2009
Engineering: Prominent New Brunswick firm, new Ontario-based parent company will add significantly to each other's strengths
FREDERICTON - One of Atlantic Canada's largest engineering companies has split up, but neither of the new entities is going very far.
Engineering and architecture consulting firm ADI Ltd. has left ADI Group Inc. to become part of Trow Global and complete the Brampton, Ont.-based company's coast-to-coast presence, the companies announced Monday.
All of ADI Ltd.'s roughly 365 employees will keep their jobs, and ADI Group is left with approximately 60 employees, most of whom work for its subsidiaries such as ADI Systems Inc. and Geomembrane Technologies Inc., which focus on treating industrial waste to generate energy or discard safely into local bodies of water.
There will be very little change, said Paul Morrison, president of ADI Ltd. The firm will keep its name and continue to focus on the Atlantic Canadian market.
"Essentially, ADI Ltd. stays the same, decisions are made locally by the same management team," Morrison said, adding that consolidation is becoming an industry-wide trend. "ADI, to our clients, remains exactly the same, it will be the same staff."
The biggest change, he said, is that the company will now have access to a broader range of resources and senior expertise in areas the firm didn't previously have such as storm run-off.
Apart from completing Trow's nation-wide presence of more than 2,400 employees, ADI Ltd. also brought something new to its new parent company.
"They have not had architecture as a service line, so our staff here in Fredericton and throughout Atlantic Canada will become the platform for offering architecture across Canada," Morrison said, adding this could mean expansions in the region.
"The mandate we've been given is to grow and we're currently investigating other acquisitions to become part of the ADI family."
Morrison said Trow Global is looking to become one of the top engineering firms in Canada within a few years and ADI Ltd. will be a significant part of a national network of companies, which plans to announce more acquisitions in the coming weeks and months.
ADI Group has been growing over the years and taking on new companies. One of the strong appeals to joining the group has always been the access to a wide range of engineering expertise, but ADI Group chief executive Hollis Cole said that won't change.
"We have a working agreement between us," he said. "We will access their services for engineering and architectural services and they will access our resources for providing design and build packages."
Cole said the two lines of business are very different so the separation, which took effect Monday, was "reasonably easy."
"They face different challenges because they are different businesses," he said. "The ADI Ltd. consulting business is Atlantic Canadian - it's closer to customers. The other is a turn-key provider of solutions and most of the contracts are all around the world."
While ADI Ltd. employs far more people than ADI Group, Cole said the two parts of the business have brought in roughly the same amount of money, in recent years.
"The business in ADI Group that remains is probably going to do more revenue this year than ADI Ltd.," he said, adding ADI Ltd. has always made money. "If you're going to sell, you want to do it when business is good. You get what it's worth then."
Company officials declined to reveal the financial value of the transaction.
Within ADI Group and its subsidiaries, roughly a quarter of the employees own shares in the private companies they work for. Under ADI Ltd.'s new arrangement almost all the employee shareholders will keep their stake in the company while Trow Global, which is also largely employee-owned, and its private outside investors will take on partial ownership of the Atlantic Canadian firm.
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
