Transport engineering firms in major merger

In a move indicative of the times, McCormick Rankin Corporation (MRC) and MMM Group (MMM) are merging their firms to create one of Canada’s largest privately owned transportation consulting practices with offices across Canada and around the world.

Engineering

McCormick Rankin, MMM Group

The firms said the merger deepens MRC’s and MMM’s transportation and environmental practices while offering MRC clients a broader range of services in planning, building engineering and geomatics services.

McCormick Rankin and subsidiary Ecoplans Ltd. will operate under their own names as part of the MMM Group.

Leon Botham, retiring chair of the Association of Canadian Engineering Companies, said there has been “significant” merger and acquisition activity in the Canadian consulting engineering industry over the past several years.

“In particular, large companies are looking at acquiring smaller firms. In some cases, large firms are merging to become even larger,” said Botham, a Saskatoon-based principal in Golder Associates Ltd.

MMM is a full-service project management, engineering, planning and geomatics firm with a wide range of projects in both the public and private sectors, in Canada and abroad.

Established in 1952 and incorporated in 1957 as Marshall Macklin Monaghan Ltd., MMM Group is a leader in the growing field of alternative delivery projects such as design-build or public-private partnerships for transportation and institutional building projects.

Founded in 1957, transportation-focused MRC provides services in diversified sectors that include highway design, transit and transportation planning. Earlier this year, the company won the Willis Chipman Award from Consulting Engineers of Ontario for its work on the Island Park Drive bridges rapid replacement project in Ottawa.

MMM and MRC share “strong, similar” corporate cultures and have teamed successfully in the past on such major assignments as Toronto’s Hwy 407 extensions, the Fredericton-Moncton Highway in New Brunswick and a runway project at Pearson International Airport.

Currently, the two firms are working together on an assignment to provide construction management services to the Toronto Transit Commission on a range of projects over a five-year period.