ATS-Chester cleaning up after Katrina
Pittsburgh Business Times - by Dan Reynolds
An endorsement from a national black mayors' group and several key hurricane-related engineering contracts are likely to double the size of a Moon Township firm over the next three years.
Bob Agbede, president and CEO of ATS-Chester Engineers, said his company has been landing contracts to inspect and redesign water and sewage treatment systems in New Orleans that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Agbede said contracts with the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans and a subcontracting role with Baton Rouge, La.-based The Shaw Group Inc., a Federal Emergency Management Agency-certified contractor that has a local office in Monroeville, will generate about $2.75 million, including $1.25 million from a pre-existing contract, for his company.
Agbede said he is seeking $5 million to $10 million in additional hurricane-related contracts, and landed an endorsement from the National Conference of Black Mayors in November as the lead engineering firm for communities damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Agbede says the endorsement is worth approximately $10 million over the next several years, as his company helps manage contracts worth $125 million for hurricane-related cleanup in the conference's 53 member cities that were damaged by the storms. The conference has 650 member cities nationwide.
Because of the hurricane work, Agbede said he expects his company will grow from around 200 employees to as many as 500 within three years. In addition to an office his company opened in New Orleans, ATS-Chester also has offices in Richmond, Va., Jacksonville, Fla., Dallas and Atlanta. In addition, ATS-Chester has Pennsylvania office in Charleroi and State College.
Agbede said he plans to add three more offices in the South in 2006, but declined to say where.
ROLE MODEL
Agbede estimated that 80 percent of New Orleans' sewer and water system was submerged in the flooding that ensued when the levees that held back Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River burst on Aug. 29.
"We are talking about electrical systems and pumps, when they get under water they shorted out," Agbede said.
He said his company is inspecting sewage and water systems to determine the extent of the damage and providing design work to rebuild them.
Agbede said his firm first started working in New Orleans approximately two years ago, when he was introduced to Mayor C. Ray Nagin by Les Matthews, chairman of New Markets, an urban redevelopment firm based in Philadelphia. As the black owner of an engineering company, Agbede said Nagin saw him as a good person to mentor blacks who wish to pursue careers in municipal engineering.
Nagin's office, which has been working to help the city recover from the flooding, did not respond to requests for comment.
'A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD'
Agbede said the fact that he's black and owns one of the largest and most prominent black-owned engineering companies in the country has been a big plus in getting work in the South. He said that's a far cry from the way his and other minority-owned companies have been received by some public officials in Western Pennsylvania.
"There are people who can't believe that I own the company," Agbede said.
He said he's heard rumors locally that because his company is successful, there has to be a white person running it. ATS-Chester Engineers ranked fourth on the Business Times 2005 list of the largest minority-owned, Pittsburgh-area companies.
He said the amount of work his company is picking up in New Orleans is a result of his connections and his business experience benefiting from free market forces.
"It's about getting a level playing field," Agbede said.
Doris Carson Williams, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania, said the sometimes unspoken understandings that can exclude minority-owned businesses from getting their fair share of work in the Pittsburgh area are a key target of her organization.
"You still have a network of business owners that tends to do business with people that they were used to doing business with," she said. "And that is a barrier that we're trying to break down."
Williams said the fact that Agbede's business has been growing actually works against him in this region.
"As long as he was a fledgling he was okay, but now that he is on a par to compete in the open market he is finding that he gets edged out a little bit," she said.
Chester Engineers' presence in Pittsburgh dates back to 1910, when the company was formed by John Chester and Thomas Fleming Jr., and was known as Chester and Fleming Consulting Engineers Inc.
In 1987, Agbede formed Advanced Technology Systems Inc., an O'Hara Township company that specialized in designing models for water treatment systems. Agbede bought Chester Engineers from U.S. Filter Corp. in 2003 for an undisclosed amount.
Agbede received a bachelor's degree in mining engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1979 and a master's degree in the same field from Pitt in 1981.
DAN REYNOLDS may be contacted at dreynolds@bizjournals.com.
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