Profile: Willdan Group Inc (WLDN.O)

Willdan Group, Inc., incorporated in May 1964, is a provider of professional technical and consulting services to public agencies at all levels of government, public and private utilities, and commercial and industrial firms. It offers services in four segments: Engineering Services, Energy Efficiency Services, Public Finance Services, and Homeland Security Services. The Company assists its clients with a range of complementary services relating to Engineering and Planning; Energy Efficiency and Sustainability; Economic and Financial Consulting, and National Preparedness and Interoperability. The Company operates its business through a network of offices located primarily in California and New York. The Company also has operations in Arizona Florida, Texas, Washington and Washington, DC.

The Company's Engineering Services segment includes the operations of its subsidiaries, Willdan Engineering and Public Agency Resources (PARs). Willdan Engineering provides civil engineering-related and city planning services, geotechnical and other engineering consulting services to the Company's clients. PARs primarily provides staffing to Willdan Engineering. The Company's Energy Efficiency Services segment consists of the business of its subsidiary, Willdan Energy Solutions, which offers energy efficiency and sustainability consulting services to utilities, public agencies and private industry. The Company's Public Finance Services segment consists of the business of its subsidiary, Willdan Financial Services, which offers economic and financial consulting services to public agencies. The Company's Homeland Security Services segment consists of the business of its subsidiary, Willdan Homeland Solutions, which offers national preparedness and interoperability services and communications and technology solutions.

The Company’s business with public agencies is concentrated in California and neighboring states. The Company provides services to approximately 56% of the 482 cities and over 60% of the 58 counties in California. The Company also serves special districts, school districts, a range of public agencies and private industry. The Company's business with public and private utilities is concentrated in California and New York. Its clients primarily consist of public and governmental agencies including cities, counties, redevelopment agencies, water districts, school districts and universities, state agencies, federal agencies, a variety of other special districts and agencies, tribal governments and public utilities. The Company also provides services to private utilities and private industry.

Engineering Services

The Company provides a range of engineering-related services to the public sector and limited services to the private sector. Its building and safety services range from managing and staffing an entire municipal building department to providing specific outsourced services, such as plan review and field inspections. Other aspects of this discipline include performing accessibility compliance and providing disaster recovery teams, energy compliance evaluations, permit processing and issuance, seismic retrofitting programs, and structural plan review. Many of the Company's building and safety services engagements are with municipalities and counties where the Company supplements the capacity of in-house staff. The Company City engineering services can range from staffing an entire engineering department to carrying out specific projects within a municipality, such as developing a pavement management program or reviewing engineering plans on behalf of a city.

The Company assists municipalities with the development and implementation of neighborhood preservation programs and the staffing of codes enforcement personnel. The Company's code enforcement and neighborhood preservation services include reviewing, studying and analyzing existing programs, developing and implementing community educational programs, developing ordinances and writing grant proposals, and providing project managers and/or supervisors. The Company offers development plan review and inspection service to clients throughout California and the Southwest. The Company's experience in plan review and inspection includes ADA compliance, preliminary and final plats (maps), grading and drainage, complete infrastructure improvements for residential site plans, commercial site plans, industrial developments, subdivision, and major planned developments. The Company's development review services include grading plans, street lighting and traffic signal plans, erosion control plans, storm drain plans, street improvement plans, sewer water and utility plans. It provides disaster recovery services to cities, counties and local government.

The Company provides environmental consulting and remediation services to cities, counties, and local governments. Its environmental services encompass many technical disciplines and programs, including environmental assessments and audits, environmental characterization and assessment, soil and groundwater investigations and information technology services. Its geotechnical and earthquake engineering services include soils engineering, earthquake and seismic hazard studies, geology and hydrogeology engineering, and construction inspection. It operates a licensed, full-service geotechnical laboratory at its headquarters in Anaheim, California, which offers an array of testing services, including construction materials testing and inspection. It assists public agencies in the design and planning of parks and recreation developments, as well as redevelopment and community-wide beautification plans. The Company's services in the area of landscape architecture include design, landscape management, urban forestry and planning. Specific projects include park design and master planning, bidding and construction documents, water conservation plans, urban beautification programs, landscape maintenance management, site planning, and assessment district management.

The Company assists communities with a range of planning services, from the preparation of long-range policy plans to assistance with the day to day operations of a planning department. For several cities, the Company provides contract staff support. The Company provides environmental documentation services, mitigation monitoring programs and third party environmental review. The Company also provides urban planning and designs services focused on investigation of specific planning and design issues and the formulation of plans, policies, and strategies for communities as a whole or for specific study areas. Assignments include land use studies, development of specific plans or general plan elements, design guidelines, and zoning ordinances. The Company's urban planning services include assisting communities with the implementation of general plans, land use enforcement, capital improvement planning, community development and redevelopment programs, and economic development strategies.

The Company provides program and construction management services to its public-sector clients. These services include construction administration, inspection, observation, labor compliance, and community relations, depending on the client's needs and the scope of the specific project. The Company's construction management experience encompasses projects, such as streets, bridges, sewers and storm drains, water systems, parks, pools, public buildings and utilities. It provides cities and counties with both interim and long-term contracts staff support services, including capital improvement planning, contract administration and code enforcement management. Its structural engineering services include bridge design, bridge evaluation and inspection, highway and railroad bridge planning and design, highway interchange design, railroad grade separation design, bridge seismic retrofitting, building design and retrofit, sound wall and retaining wall design, and planning and design for bridge rehabilitation and replacement.

The Company's surveying and mapping services include construction layout, design survey, topographic survey, aerial mapping, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and right-of-way engineering. It specializes in providing traffic engineering and planning services to governmental agencies. The Company's services range from responding to citizen complaints to designing and managing multimillion dollar capital improvement projects. Traffic engineering services include serving as the contract city traffic engineer in communities, as well as performing design and traffic planning projects for the Company's clients. These services and projects include parking management studies, intersection analyses and improvements, traffic impact reports, and traffic signal and control systems. The Company develops geometric design and channelization, traffics signal and street lighting plans, parking lot designs and traffic control plans for construction.

The Company's engineers design streets and highways, airport and transit facilities, freeway interchanges, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, pavement reconstruction, and other elements of city, county, and state infrastructure. The Company's transportation engineering services cover a full spectrum of support functions, including right of way, utility relocation, landscape, survey and mapping, geographic information systems, public outreach, and interagency coordination. These services are provided to local public works agencies, planning and redevelopment agencies, regional and state transportation agencies and commissions, transit districts, ports, railroads, and airports. The Company assists clients in addressing the many facets of water development, treatment, distribution and conservation, including energy savings, technical, financial, legal, political, and regulatory requirements. The Company provides hydraulic modeling, master planning, rate studies and design and construction services. The Company's design service includes reservoirs, pressure reducing stations, pump and lift stations, and pipeline alignment studies, as well as water/wastewater collection, distribution, and treatment facilities. It also provides a complete analysis and projection of storm flows for use in drainage master plans and for individual storm drain systems to reduce flooding in streets and adjacent properties. The Company designs open and closed storms drain systems and detention basin facilities, for cities, counties and the Army Corp of Engineers.

Energy Efficiency Services

The Company's subsidiary, Willdan Energy Solutions (WES) is an energy efficiency and sustainability consulting firm that provides specialized services in energy, water, and resource management to businesses, utilities, state agencies, municipalities, and non-profit organizations. WES energy efficiency services include comprehensive surveys, program design, benchmarking analysis, and metering. The Company provides complete energy efficiency consulting and engineering services, including: programs design, management and administration; marketing, customer outreach, and project origination; energy audits and feasibility analyses; retro-commissioning; implementation contractor recruitment, training and management; data management and reporting; retro-commissioning services, and measurement and verification services.

The Company assists clients (including utilities, schools and private companies) in developing and managing facilities and infrastructures through a holistic, practical approach to sustainability. The Company's services in the area of sustainability cover renewable energy, master plans, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for buildings, and the development of California Assembly Bill No. 811 (AB-811) projects. It assists governmental clients with the development and implementation of climate action plans. These plans include energy efficiency, water conservation, land development, renewable, and GHG reduction strategies.

Public Finance Services

The Company's subsidiary Willdan Financial Services is a public finance consulting business. The Company administers special districts on behalf of public agencies. The types of special districts administered include community facilities districts (in California, Mello-Roos districts), assessment districts, landscape and lighting districts, school facilities improvement districts, water districts, benefit assessment districts, fire suppression districts, and business improvement districts. Its administration services include calculating the annual levy for each parcel in the district; billing charges directly or through a county tax roll; preparing the annual Engineer's Report, budget and resolutions; reporting on collections and payment status; calculating prepayment quotes, and providing financial analyses, modeling and budget forecasting.

The key to the Company's District Administration services is its software package, MuniMagic: Municipal Administration & Government Information Coordinator, which the Company developed internally to redefine the way the Company administers special districts. MuniMagic is a database management program that maintains parcel data; calculates special taxes, assessments, fees and charges; manages payment tracking; maintains bond-related information in a single, central location, and provides reporting, financial modeling and analysis at multiple levels of detail. The Company performs economic analyses and financial projects for public agencies. It includes fee and rates studies, such as cost allocation studies; user fee analysis; utility rate analysis for water, wastewater and stormwater; fiscal and economic impact analysis; and development fee studies; special district formation, which involves the design, development and initiation of community facilities districts, school facilities improvement districts, assessment districts, landscape and lighting districts, benefit assessment districts, business improvement districts, fire suppression assessments, Proposition 218 studies, assessment balloting, and re-engineering, and other special projects, which include facility financing plans, the formation of new public entities, annexations and incorporations; reassessment engineering for bond refunding, and infrastructure analysis both to evaluate the need for rehabilitation efforts.

The Company offers federal compliance services to issuers of municipal securities, which can be cities, towns, school districts, housing authorities and other entities that are eligible to issue tax-exempt securities. It provides arbitrage rebate calculations and municipal disclosure services that helps issuers remain in compliance with federal regulations. The Company provides these reports, together with related compliance services, such as bond elections, temporary period yield restriction, escrow fund monitoring, rebate payments and refund requests. In terms of continuing disclosure services, the Company both produces the required annual reports and disseminates those reports on behalf of the issuers. It provides federal compliance services to approximately 610 issuers in 38 states and the District of Columbia on more than 2,500 bonds.

Homeland Security Services

The Company's subsidiary, Willdan Homeland Solutions (WHS), provides emergency preparedness planning, emergency preparedness training, emergency preparedness exercises, communications and technology, and water security services that focus on integrating local resources and assets within state and federal systems to cities, counties and related municipal service agencies, such as utility and water companies, as well as school districts, port and transportation authorities, tribal governments and large business enterprises with a need for homeland security related services. The Company designs, develops, implements, reviews, and evaluates public and private agencies' emergency operations and hazards mitigation plans, including compliance and consistency with federal, state and local laws and policies.

The Company also provides command and controls and emergency response training for all types of unusual occurrences. It has developed emergency operations, hazard mitigation, continuity of operations and business continuity and recovery plans for municipal governments, special districts, schools districts, and private-industry clients. It designs customized training courses for all aspects of disaster, unusual occurrence and emergency responses. It offers National Incident Management System (NIMS) and Incident commands System (ICS) courses specific to water and wastewater agencies.

The Company competes with Charles Abbott & Associates, Inc., Bureau Veritas, Harris & Associates, Psomas, RBF Consulting, Tetra Tech, Inc., Stantec, Inc., Michael Baker Corporation, TRC Companies, Inc., AECOM Technology Corporation, CH2M Hill, Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., ICF International, Lime Energy, the DNV Group, Nexant, Inc., David Taussig & Associates, Harris & Associates, NBS Government Finance Group, URS Corporation and SRA International, Inc.