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Metro Transportation Group
Acting locally and globally
When David Miller started Metro Transportation Group in 1980, he saw a need for a specialized roadway transportation engineering consulting firm. Little did he know that it would grow as much as it has. They not only cornered local midwestern markets working for a wide range of clients in the private and public sectors, they also found jobs in farflung countries around the world.
The firm has its corporate office in Hoffman Estates, Illinois and other offices in Chicago and Fort Myers, Florida. Some 30 fulltime employees staff the locations along with seven to 10 part-time employees that do data collection and traffic counts. Those numbers should grow soon, though, because Metro is in the process of opening an office in Detroit, Michigan.
Much of Metro’s success traces back to the partnership Miller formed with Rolf Kilian, the company’s executive vice president. Before starting Metro, Miller, now president, worked for Alan Voorhees, a large transportation firm, and shortly after they were acquired by somebody else, he decided to venture off and form his own traffic engineering firm. Meanwhile, Kilian worked for Barton Aschman, a nationally recognized traffic engineering firm, for 27 years. They too were acquired by somebody in 1985 and eventually became Parsons Transportation Group. ”After five years of all the changes going on, I decided to leave. I joined David Miller in 1990. We were both doing the same kinds of things, and we both think alike, so it was a good marriage,” he recalls.
Originally,
Miller and Kilian concentrated mainly on traffic impact studies for the
private sector. Over the years, they’ve added signal design and
systems, transportation planning, parking layouts, and intersection design
studies and have expanded to the public sector. Public clients include
municipalities such as towns and counties, state and county highway departments,
cultural institutions, park districts, and educational institutions. Private
clients include corporations, medical institutions, religious institutions,
developers, architects, attorneys, other engineering firms, financial
institutions, planning firms, and contractors. They have provided traffic
analysis for many multi-use developments, working with consulting teams
of architects, developers, engineers, and attorneys.
Examples of Metro’s work abound in Chicago and throughout Illinois. They performed a traffic planning study for the northernmost section of the Central Station development in Chicago and its third phase. This includes 6.8 million square feet of mixed commercial, retail, hotel, and office space with the development linked to adjacent roadways at various locations. Metro provided analyses at critical intersections near the site, in the process conforming with the City of Chicago Lakefront Protection Ordinance. This included providing continuous access by pedestrians to the Lake Michigan shoreline, improved public transportation to the lakefront, and a reduction in vehicular volumes in the area.
A project developed by the Illinois Department of Transportation had Metro studying a series of Strategic Regional Arterial (SRA) corridors intended to supplement the primary expressway system, enhance public transportation, accommodate commercial vehicle traffic, increase personal mobility, and reduce congestion. This involved long-range planning for over 1400 miles and 70 SRA corridors comprising over 1,400 miles throughout Northeastern Illinois, with Metro participating in three subsets representing over 700 miles.
Not
surprisingly, all the transportation engineers carrying out such projects
for Metro are civil types. “You have to have a degree in civil engineering
with a specialty in transportation. That means taking some transportation
courses as part of their civil engineering curriculum. Then the rest of
it is essentially on-the-job training,” Kilian explains. “My
first boss told me a long time ago, and I think he was right, that traffic
engineering is 30 percent science and 70 percent art. And you learn the
30 percent science in school and the 70 percent art on the job.”
He goes on to say, “Most of our people are registered professional
engineers. We do have some younger people straight out of school.”
The latter are waiting to get their four years experience so they can
take the P.E. test.
Beyond a civil engineering degree and P.E. license, people in the company haven take various other routes to become transportation engineers. Stephen Corcoran, a registered engineer and principal, is a certified Professional Traffic Operations Engineer. John Severin, another principal and licensed engineer, is certified with the International Municipal Signal Association as a Work Zone Safety Specialist and a Traffic Signal Electrician Level II. Robert DuBoe, a vice president who manages the downtown Chicago office, holds a rating as a planner given by the American Institute of Certified Planners.
Then there’s Kilian, who says, “I am an oddball. All of my experience has been on-the-job training. I’m not a registered engineer. Never went to college. I have been accepted as an expert on quite a few court cases, but I don’t have a degree. I don’t actually do civil engineering, just traffic and transportation engineering. That’s my specialty.”
Each of Metro’s offices typically serves the area surrounding it, and if necessary, they get support from the main office. The firm’s work focuses mainly on the midwestern area around Chicago, though the Fort Myers office covers jobs in Florida. The Chicago office is a smaller one that serves mainly to get work from the City of Chicago and Cook County.
But though the work takes mostly a regional focus, Metro ironically finds itself doing occasional jobs in other countries due to the nature of the industry. “Because of my work at Barton Aschman, I had clients all across the country, and through that, I’ve been able to do some work overseas, most recently a project in Qatar,” Kilian explains. Miller had also done work in the Middle East through Aramco Oil. Kilian has done work in Korea, China, South America, and Australia as well. “But those were one-of-a-kind projects. When they come along, it’s usually through our association with a large engineering firm or architectural firm that land the project, and they need some assistance on transportation.”
In
the U.S. but outside the Chicago area, Kilian says he does work in places
like St. Louis, Detroit, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. “I still have
a national clientele that comes back to me once in awhile.” This
has led to the need for an office in Detroit. “We’ve been
doing quite a bit of work there without any marketing. It’s just
repeat and referral business.” They have worked with a couple engineering
firms in Detroit who keep referring work their way. Kilian has worked
on the project for new the General Motors global headquarters in downtown
Detroit for seven years, but that’s slowly wrapping up. “It’s
time we have have a presence there and so some marketing and get a good
chunk of the local market. There’s a need for some competition there.”
Snapshot
Company: Metro Transportation Group
Type: Roadway transportation engineering consulting firm
Location: Corporate office in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Other offices in Chicago and Fort Myers, Florida.
Website: www.metrotransportation.com
Phone: 630-213-1000
Contact information for submitting resumes:
Rolf Kilian, executive vice president
Mailing address: 3100 W. Higgins Rd., Suite 100, Hoffman Estates, IL 60195-2093
E-mail address: rpk@metrotransportation.com
Outlook for Hiring Engineers:
Rolf Kilian reports, “We don’t staff up for projects like
some larger architectural engineering firms. Most of our projects aren’t
that large, so we need a good backlog of work before we hire somebody.
We try to hire for the long term rather than just for a project. Right
now, we’re looking for one person who might have three to five years
experience at potentially an entry level.”
But Kilian says the big news is that he’s also interviewing for someone to head Metro’s newly-forming Detroit, Michigan office. “I’m looking for somebody locally that is well respected and well known, someone that knows how to get things done and where to go to get them done and can go out and do some marketing and build up the office.” Look for them to hire engineers for the new location.
As for the methods of recruiting Metro uses, Kilian reports, “There are quite a few different ways. We work with professors at various schools that refer good candidates our way. I’ve had a good working relationship with Marquette, Michigan State, the University of Missouri-Rolla, and the University of Illinois. There’s also the Institute of Transportation Engineers; all of our engineers are members.” Several principals have served as president of the Illinois section. “We also advertise in the professional journals. As a last resort, we’ll go through a recruiter.”
“You’ve got to have a passion for this kind of work,” Kilian says in describing what Metro looks for in transportation engineers. “I look for people who are personable because even though we’re engineers, we’re also salespeople. You’ve got to be able to not only sell yourself but also your product, the result of whatever studies we’re working on. You have to sell them to your client, to the public agencies, and eventually to the public. We go through public hearing processes on most development projects. You’ve got to be able to give a presentation and be able to come across and be believable.”
Progressive
Engineer
Editor: Tom Gibson
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©2004 Progressive Engineer