Pennoni is a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm headquartered in Philadelphia, founded in 1966 by Celestino Pennoni and now operating from offices across the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Southeast. The practice covers civil and structural engineering, land development, surveying, construction management, environmental services and water and wastewater engineering, working for municipal, state, institutional and private clients. Pennoni provided engineering support and visualization on the Delaware Memorial Bridge ship collision protection system for the Delaware River and Bay Authority. The firm’s project mix runs heavily toward public infrastructure, campus work and site development, and it has grown through both organic expansion and acquisition of regional engineering practices.
Ownership at Pennoni sits entirely with the staff. Founder C.R. “Chuck” Pennoni set up an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 1994 as the mechanism for handing the company to its employees; the first purchase covered 30 percent of the shares and the transfer completed in 2018. Shares are contributed each year based on company profitability and allocated to employees by salary and years of service, with no money out of pocket. The firm now counts more than 1,400 people across upwards of 40 offices and appears on the ENR Top 500 list.
The office map describes the geography better than a region name does. Pennsylvania alone holds locations in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, King of Prussia, West Chester, Warrington, Sellersville, State College, Mechanicsburg, Jessup, Pittston Township, Bethlehem and Plains, with further offices in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Virginia. Market groups run from commercial and retail through education, energy, government, healthcare and life sciences, industrial and logistics, infrastructure, leisure and entertainment, residential, and waterfront and marine, with a separate international practice.
Several service lines carry credentials worth naming. The construction materials testing laboratories in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and Haddon Heights, New Jersey are AASHTO-accredited, and the King of Prussia lab is also validated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Special inspections are covered by IAS accreditation to ISO/IEC 17020. Construction engineering and inspection staff hold NICET, ACI, NECEPT, MARTCP, NJSAT and NACE certifications. The waterfront and marine group fields licensed dive professionals for underwater and NDT inspections, bulkhead, wharf and pier design, and hydrographic surveying. Digital Labs, the firm’s technology group, covers data capture, digital modeling and simulation, and asset monitoring.
Two projects show the spread of the work. On I-95 Section CAP in Philadelphia, Pennoni built a traffic model covering 92 intersections and prepared the traffic management plan for staged construction and full closures of I-95, South Street, Walnut Street and Chestnut Street. At Roosevelt Plaza Park in Camden, the firm worked with Sikora Wells Appel and New American Public Art on two pop-up installations in the 75,000-square-foot park; the second version was organized around stormwater education, with a rain curtain, a water organ and an on-site irrigation system, and the work drew the APA New Jersey chapter’s Outstanding Implemented Plan Award and a Great Places Award.
