Keast & Hood

Keast & Hood is a structural engineering firm based in Philadelphia. It has practiced since 1953, when Raymond Hood Jr. carried on the office of William H. Gravell & Associates and brought in Sheldon Keast as a partner. The firm designs new buildings and is known for preservation work, renovations, adaptive reuse, building envelope assessments and structural investigations. Its past work includes Louis Kahn’s library at Phillips Exeter Academy and Franklin Court in Philadelphia. The office has 28 staff, 25 of them engineers, and holds WBENC, WBE, SBE and DBE certifications. Keast & Hood is the structural engineer on the Mütter Museum and College of Physicians expansion in Philadelphia.

The practice is organised around five areas rather than a single structural service. New construction covers structural systems for new buildings. Historic preservation is intervention aimed at keeping landmark buildings standing and in use. A third area handles renovations, additions and adaptive reuse, where the firm evaluates an existing structure’s condition and confirms it can carry the function being asked of it. Building envelope work covers facade, roof and waterproofing assessment. The fifth, structural investigation and intervention, is investigation, testing and repair strategy for structures that are already in trouble.

Carbon is treated as a design constraint. Keast & Hood has signed the SE2050 commitment, a pledge to reach net-zero embodied carbon in its structural systems by 2050, and says it does that by reusing historic structural elements where possible and choosing lower-carbon materials, with projects aligned to standards including LEED and Green Globes.

The office is in Center City, Philadelphia, and the firm describes its work as spanning the Northeast and beyond. The certifications it holds – Women’s Business Enterprise, Small Business Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise – matter on publicly funded and institutional projects where participation goals apply, so they are worth confirming directly with the firm before a bid.

Recent activity gives a sense of the current book. In September 2026 the firm announced it had joined the project team for a new Philadelphia arena. In July 2026 it recognised two staff members, Amanda M. Grogin and Matthew D. Schilling, for earning their Professional Engineer licences, which is the kind of note that says something about how the office grows its own engineers rather than hiring only finished ones.

Leadership is partner-and-principal structured, with named principals holding PE and SE registrations and credentials such as CDT. For an owner shortlisting structural engineers on an older building, the useful question is which of the five practice areas the project actually sits in, because preservation, envelope and investigation work are run as separate disciplines here rather than as a side service to new design.