[NEWS] Green means go for Glumac

BY LAILA KEARNEY   - San Francisco Business Times

 San Francisco-based Glumac is the rare engineering company that has managed to grow in recent years. 

The boom in green building has powered the expansion of the 39-year-old sustainable consulting engineering company.

The firm, which focuses on energy-efficient design, grew from $28 million in revenue in 2008 to $34.5 million revenue in 2009, with projections of $39 million for 2010.  Glumac has 200 employees and eight offices across California and in Seattle, Portland and Las Vegas.  Recently, the company has been doing more work in China, where it is looking into opening a ninth office.

Glumac designs and retrofits mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems for commercial, health care, institutional and technology buildings.  The firm’s projects include the Transamerica Pyramid and Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, Stanford University and the National Library of Spain.  The firm employs more than 90 LEED-accredited team members and emphasizes energy efficiency, designing plumbing systems requiring less water or heating and cooling systems aided by solar or wind power.

Eco-friendliness has become a defining quality for the company in the past decade, but mechanical engineer Dick Glumac, founder of Glumac, said he has always worked with environmental consciousness.  For engineers, he said, it’s almost natural law.

“Energy efficiency is a characteristic of engineers,” Glumac said.  “Throughout our training in schools and everything, (we) are always looking for maximum efficiency.”

Simon Snellgrove, principal at San Francisco developer Pacific Waterfront Partners, was Glumac’s first client in San Francisco.  “(Glumac) adopted green technology and took a leadership role when all that came about,” said Snellgrove, who still uses the firm on projects like Pier 24.

Since retirement in 2000, the company has focused more on marketing itself as a sustainable engineering firm because of consumer demand, said Rick Thomas, managing principal of Glumac’s San Francisco offices.  Glumac still comes into the office every day and chairs the company’s board of directors.  Glumac’s CEO is Steven Straus, who works out of the Portland, Ore., office.

“Ten years ago, we didn’t do LEED projects, energy analysis of CFD (water flow) modeling,” Thomas said.  “Things that we’re doing now to service our clients that are really in demand didn’t even exist.  It has really mushroomed our opportunities for doing different kinds of work.”

Thomas said his firm doesn’t have to build new building systems for them to be energy efficient; they can simply be tweaked.  These days, 20 percent of Glumac’s workload comes from retrofitting systems for maximum efficiency.

A native Yugoslavian, Glumac’s founded defected to North American in 1951 and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1956 with a degree in mechanical engineering.  A decade later, Glumac moved to San Francisco, working for a consulting firm for six years and then opening up shop for himself.  With $6,000 in personal savings, he leased an office in Embarcadero One, for which he designed the mechanical systems.

Seven years after starting the business, he went into partnership with electrical engineer Cal Webster.  In 1977, Webster and Glumac closed the books on their company, Glumac and Webster, and Glumac decided to start a new business that allowed him to bring on several more partners.

“You want people who are working in the firm to own the firm so that the people who are in the really important positions are playing with their own money,” said Glumac.  The company now has 17 principals companywide.

Glumac plans to retire for the second time and will spend his time on one of the most energy efficient designs – a sailboat.  He plans to sail to the Greek islands with his wife.