SSR, short for Smith Seckman Reid, opened for business in Nashville on Feb. 1, 1968 and is still headquartered there, on Sidco Drive. It’s an engineering design and consulting firm best known for mechanical, electrical and plumbing work, serving healthcare, education, sports and entertainment, industrial, federal and transportation clients from more than a dozen offices. The company became 100 percent ESOP-owned in 2016 and calls its staff colleagues, not employees. It doesn’t publish a headcount on the pages we read. SSR was MEP engineer on Phase 1 of the M&T Bank Stadium Renovation in Baltimore, per ENR’s regional Best Projects listing, working under architect Gensler and construction manager Gilbane.
A number worth adding to the summary above: SSR now states that it has over 550 engineers, consultants and professionals. The existing description here says the firm does not publish a headcount, and that is no longer the case.
The published market list runs to ten, which is wider than the MEP-for-hospitals reading the firm often gets. Healthcare and education are there, along with science and technology, sports and entertainment, commercial, industrial, infrastructure, transportation, federal government, and civic and community. Science and technology work is the one to notice alongside healthcare: labs and clean rooms share the same problem as operating theatres – air changes, pressure relationships and redundancy – which is why a firm that is strong in one tends to be credible in the other.
Three commitments on the environmental side are stated explicitly. SSR is a signatory to the AIA 2030 Commitment, which obliges a firm to report the predicted energy use of its portfolio each year rather than simply design efficient buildings when asked. It runs a greenhouse gas reporting program covering its own operations. And it maintains a sustainability action plan. For a mechanical engineer those are not decorative – annual portfolio reporting means someone inside the firm is measuring what its designs actually consume.
Offices named on the about page, beyond the Nashville headquarters, are Houston, Dallas and Sarasota. The firm describes more than a dozen locations in total but does not publish the full list in one place.
The colleague-owner language the firm uses is worth taking at face value rather than as branding. Every colleague participates in the employee stock ownership plan, and the firm presents the 2016 completion of that transition as the fulfilment of the founders’ original intent rather than a succession fix. On a multi-year project the practical consequence is that the senior staff leading the design hold equity in the outcome.
The headquarters remains at 2995 Sidco Drive in Nashville, on 615-383-1113.
