Engineering firm adds versatility: TBT Engineering picks up Profor assets.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: DESIGN-BUILD

A Thunder Bay engineering firm is expanding its skill set and its Northern reach by joining forces with a neighbouring operation.

TBT Engineering Consulting Group announced that Profor Engineering will be joining its team, effective Nov. 1.

Company president Rob Frenette refrained from calling it an acquisition but rather an asset purchase, price undisclosed.

"We're excited to be able to reach this agreement with Profor and we're looking forward to welcoming all the Profor staff and clients into the TBT experience. Moving ahead, I just see bright, sunny days." TBT Engineering is a 115-employee multi-disciplinary firm, mostly serving clients in transportation and mining.

Frenette said Profor's well-respected mechanical and electrical engineering expertise complements TBT's structural engineering group which will form a full-fledged building engineering sciences group.

"Anyone looking at any kind of facilities expansion, or new facilities, or retrograde, or renovation on any building structure in the ICI (industrial-commercial-institutional) sector, they will require a combination of structural and electrical-mechanical." Frenette explained the courting process evolved quickly, beginning with a lunch meeting with outgoing Profor president Lance Reid more than two months ago.

"The timing was right. He was in a position in his life where he was looking for an opportunity to retire and make sure that staff, clients and the operation that he'd been involved with since 1993 would continue." Sounding almost like a succession plan, Frenette said Reid had entertained previous offers for his electrical and mechanical engineering firm that didn't materialize.

Profor is the former Proctor and Redfern operation, which closed its doors in Thunder Bay in 1993.

It resulted in two companies being spun off with Profor and Engineering Northwest, a civil engineering firm, that later became a branch office of Hatch Mott MacDonald.

Both firms currently reside in office space in a Syndicate Avenue building in the city's south end.

There was a pre-existing comfort level between the two companies as TBT often contracted out to Profor on projects.

The inclusion of Profor into the TBT mix should enable the group to bid on greater project work and allow them to get on prequalification lists...