Building dreams one blueprint at a time

Rich Palzewic

Staff

November 4, 2024

NEENAH – Full-service engineering and architectural firm McMahon is celebrating 115 years in business.

Company President Paul Benedict said McMahon – which is headquartered in Neenah (1445 McMahon Drive), with additional locations in Valparaiso, Indiana, and Machesney Park, Illinois – has helped to shape communities throughout the Midwest for more than a century.

Since its founding in 1909, Benedict said McMahon has been an integral part of community growth and development – supporting projects and fostering long-standing relationships with clients across various sectors.

“As a local, privately owned firm, our employees have a personal stake in the projects they work on, and they are invested in improving the communities where they live,” he said. 

Benedict said McMahon has been pivotal in bringing essential projects to life through site development, roads, sewers and water and wastewater systems for decades.

“The firm has also notably enhanced industrial, healthcare and education infrastructure,” he said. “In addition, McMahon actively supports local initiatives through sponsorships, partnerships and in-kind services.”

Benedict said 115 years – in any industry – is a big deal.

“We’re pretty excited about (that),” he said. “I would say it’s a testament to our commitment to service the long-term relationships we have with clients. One of our biggest things here is 80-85% of our business comes from repeat clients. The longevity of our company is a reflection of the longevity of our clients – and we’ve worked with many clients for more than 50 years. It’s something we’re proud of.”

Benedict said McMahon’s steadfast existence is also a credit to the company’s culture.

“We call it the ‘McMahon Way,’” he said. “It’s our service-oriented philosophy with the end goal of developing long-term relationships, so it’s all about our company. We talk about it every day with our staff – we need to provide outstanding service to our clients on every project. You hope the client has a great experience and a successful project, which we call a win. And then by having that happen, you hope they’re going to retain you or hire you for their next project. Pretty soon, you become what we call a trusted partner.”

Six primary divisions

Benedict said McMahon has six primary divisions, with the biggest one being environmental/infrastructure.

“That’s basically civil engineering,” he said. “That division does a lot of site development for municipalities doing their stormwater sewers, roads and stuff like that. It also includes GIS (geographic information systems) for wetlands and ponds.”

Benedict said the company’s other divisions include:

• Industrial – working in manufacturing, food, cheese, dairy, etc.
• General architectural – working in commercial, educational, medical, office buildings, etc.
• Wastewater – working with municipalities on their water/wastewater treatment plants
• Structures/building systems – support services, structural engineering, electrical, etc.
• Public safety/municipal management – working with former police/fire chiefs and former city and village administrators on consolidation, etc.

Benedict said most of McMahon’s growth has come from the support of its municipal clients.  

“As their demands increase, we will continue to grow – it’s a natural thing,” he said. “We don’t necessarily force it or look to expand and buy into different markets, but it’s been client-driven.”

Changes over the years

Benedict, who has been with McMahon for 28 years, said he has seen a lot of technological changes during his time and expects to see more in the future.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is that our retention rate with our staff is about 92%,” he said.

Technology within the industry, Benedict said, has also changed pretty drastically over the years.

“When I first started, there were computers, but with drafting, it was mostly still manual,” he said. “CAD (computer-aided design) was in its infancy stage.”

Nowadays, Benedict said McMahon uses Revit, a 3D modeling software.

“We don’t do anything by hand anymore,” he said. “Obviously, CAD is much more efficient than drafting by hand, but I realize there are a lot of drafters out there who went into drafting many decades ago because they liked the art of drawing blueprints by hand.”

Benedict said McMahon has begun implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into its processes “to take some of those repetitive tasks (off the plates of) employees” for a more automated workflow.

“It’s not taking jobs away, but just making it more efficient,” he said. “If you do something and you’re repeating it over and over, that’s where AI is going to help streamline the creative part of what we do. The interacting-with-people part of what we do, AI really can’t replace that, but it helps with the mundane activities – spreadsheets and stuff like that. AI is going to expand and help make that a lot easier for us to deal with.”

When McMahon began operations in 1909, Benedict said the company had around 10 employees.

“It was a municipal civil engineering company, and we also did some water and wastewater,” he said. “We’ve obviously grown since then. Today, we’ve grown to about 170 employees.”

Benedict said McMahon existed as a municipal civil engineering company “for quite some time.”

Community involvement

Benedict said McMahon works with more than 200 municipalities off and on, which allows for “lots of community involvement.”

“We’re proud of our community involvement,” he said. “We’re a privately owned company, so all our employees feel invested in the projects that happen. You want to see the projects be successful. We’re all over the Fox Valley, so because of that, a lot of our municipal clients and employees have initiatives they are a part of.”

Benedict said such initiatives are often coordinated through a church or a sports team.

“We have a lot of groups who come to us and ask, ‘Can you help out with a donation?’” he said. “We also might have groups that ask us to help out with the design of a dugout for a new baseball field or a site design for a complex. We’ll do in-kind services, or we’ll do donations to help our employees in the things they want to be involved in.”

Benedict said one of the bigger community projects McMahon was a part of happened a few years ago.

“We helped out the Harbor House (a domestic abuse program),” he said. “We did an in-kind donation to design its big expansion. As a company, we donated our design services for that, so multiple levels were involved in that project.”

In the 1980s, Benedict said new leadership reinvigorated the company a bit – “especially with its community involvement.”

“ Denny Lamers, McMahon president (at that time), and his two partners, Dennis Buschke and Gary Rosenbeck, were the ones who created this service-oriented culture we have,” he said. “We probably had 20-30 employees about that time, and by the mid-1990s, we started bringing on architects and expanding into the commercial and industrial projects.”

Veteran-friendly, veteran-ready

In September 2022, McMahon was awarded the Patriot Award for being a veteran-friendly and veteran-ready employer – a recognition it was nominated for by one of its employees.

Benedict said McMahon takes working with veterans very seriously.

“We supported (an employee) in his active duty roles and stuff like that,” he said. “We’re a big proponent of veterans working at McMahon and supporting them through everything. That same employee is now looking at getting his training in flying helicopters.”

Benedict said if he has his way, McMahon will be around for another 115 years – and beyond.

For more information, visit mcmgrp.com.