Coler & Colantonio Inc.
Source: Plymouth County Business Review
Publication date: October 1, 2006
By Pevzner, Michael

Look around you at the land development projects sprouting on the South Shore, and chances are you'll find the work of Coler & Colantonio, Inc., Engineers and Scientists, whose headquarters is in Accord Pond Park in Norwell. Their skills in civil engineering, environmental services, pipelines, surveying, transportation engineering, and more have been put to use by public officials and private developers in practically every Plymouth County town.

But that's not all, because Coler & Colantonio, Inc. is also a national and international force with its name attached to civil engineering and development projects from Maine to Florida, Texas to California and overseas in Europe, Africa and Asia. It's a success story that began 20 years ago when Jim Colantonic, and Ron Coler, civil and surveying engineers respectively, made the move from employees at another firm to partners and owners of their own firm.

Jim Colantonio graduated from Villanova University in Pennsylvania and came up to New England to work. As he tells it: "I worked on large projects - water treatment, sewers etc. I always wanted to be in business for myself, so in pursuit of that goal I got an MBA at Northeastern University. At age forty, Ron Coler and I teamed up and started the business. We both had contacts with clients who gave us work. We moved out of the city and came to the suburbs. People in the suburbs were scrutinizing land development more carefully, a fact that provided a nice fit for the skills that we honed in the city. Project led to project, from one town to the next, then to other states, and now we're an international company." Growth has been steady. They have grown to five partners and 175 employees.

Serving the Land Development Market
One of the newer partners is Ken Caputo, who is in charge of the land-development side of the business. Ken joined the company in 1991 as a civil engineer assigned to the Costco Wholesale Club project along Route 24 in Avon. Thirteen years later, he was the development point man for the IKEA site nearby. Ken's specialty is reaching out to large and small retailers, developers and brokers who service retailers. His energy and drive was a motivating force behind the new construction affiliate of Coler & Colantonio, Inc., Mount Blue Construction.

Ken Caputo describes his wide responsibilities: "In the Plymouth area you see sites being developed. They could be ownerpurchased, occupied and developed, where we would work directly for the owner, as we did with IKEA. There could be a developer who is developing a certain site for sale or lease to future tenants. In either case, the owner needs to get the site permitted and approved for the intended use."

Coler & Colantonio, Inc. provides the professional services that get initial approval for a development. They are the engineers, surveyors, environmental experts and even the road planners who look at a piece of land and see what will fit.

Jim Colantonio explains: "We rely on owners, developers, brokers, etc. to identify pieces of land for development. Typically speaking, we will receive a call that starts out with 'here's a piece of land.' We are then charged with the task of doing a feasibility study to find out if we can accommodate a development plan on that property. Based on the findings of the assessment, the design and permitting process are begun.

The firm designed and permitted a large mixed-use development in the center of Norfolk. In Avon, they were heavily involved with development of Home Depot, Costco, the Christmas Tree Shops and the entire Stockwell Drive, Merchant's Park, development. The company has been involved in 90% of that development in that park from the beginning. On the residential side, there's a large apartment complex development project with Lincoln Properties in Braintree.

An important feature of our approach to the development process is that we can construct what we design. We started a company called Mount Blue Construction, a separate company, but commonly owned, in the interest of providing us with a vehicle for seeing our design and permitting efforts to their logical conclusion: construction. Before we created Mount Blue, we'd be handling just the permitting and design side of things. Our engineering services took care of getting permits and approvals, and then the company might be hired to provide some construction oversight and management inspection. Now, we are able to prepare the site and build the site. We don't build buildings - the developer hires a general building contractor for that but we'll do all the site work. We'll manage the subcontractors that come in to do that, and we'll do any off-site improvements that are required."

Serving the Energy Industry
Another market pursued by the company is in the energy field. Clients come from oil, gas and electric transmission and distribution companies. As Ken Stanley, another partner who heads up the energy division, puts it: "Our client base is Keyspan of New England, N-Star and local distribution companies. We support the local distribution market here in New England and the transmission market across the country, primarily from a natural gas perspective."

Jim Colantonio adds: "That's an important distinction. Ken Caputo's land development division is an offshoot of what we've been doing for 20 years. It's focused in New England, mostly Massachusetts. Ken Stanley's energy division is nationally focused. We have an office in Houston and one in Portland, Maine. On the energy side, we are a national company." Coler & Colantonio, Inc. is heavily invested in providing services to major energy companies, including civil, survey, environmental permitting, hazardous waste mechanical, and electrical. They're involved in projects that range from a simple $2,000 street crossing and easement for local distribution to hundreds of miles of natural gas transmission pipeline worth millions of dollars.

Another very significant offering to the energy market is our software development capabilities geared to assets management. Jeff Allen, another partner in the firm, has spearheaded the development software for assets management that he has placed in some of the biggest energy firms in the world, including Exxon Mobil. "We have a suite of programs that we developed that is tailored a lot to the gas and energy market, with applications elsewhere as well." It's Coler & Colantonio, Inc.'s software that has allowed giant pipeline companies to digitize all the paper records from the 1940s and 50s, in conjunction with current data, in the interest of management and maintenance of their facilities.

"Much of our work in the energy sector is ultimately underground, and therefore goes unnoticed, Jim Colantonio explains. " We supported the development of the site of the power plant in Weymouth back in 1995. We were the engineering team in support of a new pipeline across the Fore River to bring natural gas to that plant. Down on the Cape, we supported Algonquin Gas when they crossed the canal to bring natural gas to Canal Electric, Another significant one is N-Star's project that comes from Boston down to Stoughton, That's a 22-mile weaving pipeline that's an underground electric line. All pipelines, all underground, all invisible."

Serving Municipal Clients
Coler & Colantonio, Inc. certainly has fingers in projects across the United States and around the world. Back in their own back yard, they are involved with municipal projects that include transportation improvements for Pembroke, Hingham and Hanover, to name just a few towns. Since 1994, the firm has worked with the Town of Norfolk to create a town center. The firm provides consulting to several municipalities relative to their water and wastewater systems. Included in this group is Kingston, Winthrop and Weymouth. They also were involved in the Bluestone project. This project will deliver treated water from the Taunton River to Brockton as well as other towns. Coler & Colantonio, Inc. performed a detailed feasibility assessment of routes for the piped delivery system. That's a 17-mile, 24-inch water pipeline. The firm has also established GIS systems for towns that allow them to facilitate data handling in the interest of town management. Software systems have been established in Hingham and Hull among other towns.

International Work
The firm has provided services overseas. It has completed a study in Poland that focused on providing innovative wastewater treatment systems as well as completed the design of a wastewater treatment plant in southern Poland. They have also worked in Venezuela and Peru, and are currently working on a water and wastewater assignment in Kenya.

Jim Colantonio, as one of the founders of the company, is justifiably proud of their achievements and their success. One of their early successes was beating out a much larger company to develop a natural gas pipeline that was proposed to run from South Boston, across Boston Harbor, Logan Airport and then to Revere, utilizing active rail lines along much of the route. It was their youth and enthusiasm, as well as their talent, that landed that contract. Today, Coler & Colantonio is competing with the big boys in the field on a regular basis. But that drive to accomplish huge tasks and be the best in their field has never waned. You can hear it i\n the pride of Jim Colantonio as he waxes poetic about the success of the company he helped start 20 years ago. "It's the American dream. Nice to know that it can work. You can put a shingle out and you work hard, and it can work." 781-982-5400, www.col- col.com.

Copyright Plymouth County Development Council, Inc. Fall 2006 (c) 2006 Plymouth County Business Review. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.