Harriman Architects + Engineers merges with Boston’s The Cecil Group

Courtesy / Harriman Architects + Engineers Clifton Greim, principal of Harriman Architects + Engineers

Courtesy / Siri Blanchette Steve Cecil, principal of The Cecil Group

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By Laurie Schreiber

Auburn-based Harriman Architects + Engineers has merged with The Cecil Group, a planning, design and landscape architecture firm in Boston.

The union will allow the combined operation to offer clients a more comprehensive package of resources, the firms announced jointly Thursday.

“From the start, we realized that both firms have an underlying commitment to the notion that, when we put together buildings and sites and places, they’re a whole,” Steve Cecil, principal of The Cecil Group, said in an interview with Mainebiz. “The idea of multi-disciplinary practices and integrated projects is behind what we have been doing and what we’re going to do in the future.”

Harriman principal Clifton Greim said: “There seemed to be a real synergy the first time we met. It’s been a very positive engagement.”

Harriman, established in 1870, is one of northern New England’s largest architecture and engineering firms, with seven principals and 74 employees. Besides its headquarters in Auburn, the firm has offices in Portland and Manchester, N.H. In the most recently Mainebiz Book of Lists, it ranked third on the list of Maine’s largest architecture firms, behind SMRT Architects and Engineers in Portland and Oak Point Associates in Biddeford.

The Cecil Group, established 22 year ago, employs nine in Boston. The Cecil Group has done projects throughout the United States and abroad, with a client base that is 70% public and 30% private. Steve Cecil is becoming a principal and owner at Harriman with the merger.

Over the past few years, revenues at Harriman have grown by approximately 35% and at Cecil by 20%. Combined revenue for 2015 is projected to be $11 million.

The companies have been working together for six years. Joint projects to date include campus master plans at Bates College, Thomas College and Maine Maritime Academy, and master planning services for the University of Maine’s seven campuses.

Collaboration between disciplines seems like an obvious idea, but it’s actually not all that common in the industry, Greim said.

“There’s real synergy in being able to have conversations around the table that not only express ideas but are also couched” in a project’s overall outcome, he said. “You don’t get that every day. Many times, it’s a vertical relationship, and you’re getting direction from one voice. This is a true collaboration with equal voices around the table.”

Cecil said the siting of the new ABS Center for Engineering and Applied Research at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, as part as an overall planning package, is a great example of this collaboration.

For Harriman, the merger provides an expanded geographic presence and exposure.

“Most of our work has been in the northern New England region,” Greim said. “This is an opportunity to offer our services and our unique way of approaching our projects south of New Hampshire and Maine.”