Archive

Archive for September 2018
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2nd Annual Fulcrum Charity Golf Classic is a Win Win!

Both TFMoran’s Dylan Cruess and Dan Blais took their skills to the green for the 2nd annual Fulcrum charity golf classic. This charity was in support of the New Hampshire Food Bank raising money for families across the state in need. The tournament was held at the beautiful Manchester Country Club on September 10th, 2018 with lunch and dinner being provided for the golfers. Although the sky was filled with clouds and had an occasional drizzle, they golfed on and completed all 18 holes. But playing the course wasn’t the only win. Throughout the day, golfers had an opportunity to win a wide range of contests and raffles as well! If you didn’t want to register as a golfer for $250 a participant, there was still an option to sponsor this event from $150 to $1,500.

The winners of the golf classic walked away with orange jackets marking their achievement. Unfortunately, TFMoran did not come in first but being able to help feed thousands of local families, neighbors, children and people we walk with every day is truly our real triumph.

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Plan NH Annual Golf Tournament raises funds to benefit NH communities

As the fog rolled in, Dylan Cruess of TFMoran would be out on the Canterbury Woods Golf Course playing despite the weather. Dylan took on his second charity golf tournament on September 12th, 2018 for Plan NH. Proceeds from the annual golf classic are going towards providing financial support and recognition to students from New Hampshire who are studying in the field that reflect Plan NH’s mission. The mission being. making this state’s neighborhoods, healthy and beautiful communities to live in. Alongside the registration, breakfast was provided as well as lunch following the tournament!

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First Thunder Run 5k Obstacle Race for Team TFMud Slides… A Big Success!

September 15th, 2018 the morning was crisp and light, perfect for a mud run. New England Dragway would hold the Raymond Area Rotary Club’s 5th Annual Thunder Run, which is a 5k charity obstacle mud run that raises money from scholarships to disaster relief. About 300 people would fight through the course all for a wonderful cause. This was TFMoran’s first year participating and was organized by team captain Jenn Clark. Team shirts were designed featuring the new TFMud Slides logo on the front and “50” on the back, signifying TFMoran’s 50th Anniversary year.

10 seconds until the start time, team TFMud Slides were getting in their last stretches and warmups eagerly anticipating what muddy obstacles awaited them. The ten TFMoran employees began their mud battle through a hilly motorcross track. They hit their first stop at a stone carry followed by tire flipping. They proceeded to crawl through mud and take a dip in muddy waters which would have them climbing over logs . Following that, they balanced on a series of slippery trunks of fallen trees across a river and even crawled in an underground tunnel filled with water. The race continued into the woods where they glided, or more or less stumbled, through chest deep water with some parts of the water almost going over their heads. Trudging through thick muddy trails, the team worked together to get through and luckily no one lost their shoes in the sludge! At each obstacle, the team waited for each other and helped one another making sure no one was left behind. After each obstacle was completed, everyone high fived and encouraged each other to push on. Climbing ropes, scaling walls, walking a tight rope and sprinting up and down hills, the run was nothing short of intense and action packed. Finally, reaching the finish line, everyone took a turn sliding down a muddy watered slip and slide each cheering everyone on. Together they ran through the finish line and completed the Thunder Run 5k with mud everywhere and a smile on everyone’s face. Starving from the race, the team went to The Holy Grail to celebrate, eat and cheers to the team’s success and to contributing to a good cause.

Will there be another mud run in the future for this team? Absolutely.

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Understanding Stormwater Best Management Practices

by Dan Blais, CPESC – TFMoran Senior Project Manager

Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) are an important part of site designs to control the volume and quality of stormwater runoff. Projects go through review and permitting at the local and state level to ensure the requirements of the Clean Water Act are being observed. Once a project is completed, these practices require routine inspection and maintenance to insure they are working properly.

Recently the NHDES sent letters to permitees of the state Alteration of Terrain program reminding them of the permit requirement for documentation of their Operation & Maintenance program for stormwater BMPs. The first component of an effective program is performing routine inspections of the practices. Here in the northeast, at least two inspections annually are recommended:

An inspection of all Stormwater BMPs should be performed after leaf drop in the fall to ensure the inlets and outlets of catch basins, swales, ponds and the surfaces of infiltration practices are free from leaf matter that can clog the inlets, outlets, or infiltration surfaces and cause a malfunction. A second inspection should be performed after snow melt in the spring to determine if there is erosion of slopes or accumulation of sediment in catch basin sumps (from parking lot sanding operations in the winter for example).

The TFMoran Stormwater Compliance Group performs Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan inspections and stormwater discharge of stormwater BMPs during construction, as well as bi-annual inspections of practices after construction has been completed.

Call us to see how we can help you stay in compliance.

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TFM Structural Engineering project featured in New Hampshire Union Leader

One of TFMoran’s structural engineering projects, the Glen House hotel, is in the news! On Monday, September 10, 2018 the New Hampshire Union Leader featured an article on the front page about the opening of the Glen House hotel, completing the 25-year master plan for the Mount Washington Auto Road in Green’s Grant, NH. TFMoran provided structural design services this new 3-story, 68-room hotel for project architect BMA Architectural Group of Amherst, NH. Stibler Associates of Bedford, NH provided interior design, and Martini Northern of Portsmouth, NH was the general contractor.

Congratulations to The Glen House!

To view the pdf of the printed article, click this link: Union Leader Article 09-12-18_Glen House

Or read the text below:

Opening of Glen House hotel completes 25-year master plan for

Mount Washington Auto Road

Howie Wemyss, general manager of the Mount Washington Auto Road, stands on the third-floor balcony of a room in the new Glen House hotel, which is opening soon. The hotel has 68 rooms, about half of which have balconies looking west at the Auto Road and the tallest peak in the Northeast. (JOHN KOZIOL/CORRESPONDENT)

GREEN’S GRANT — When it opens this week, the fifth Glen House will become the newest lodging establishment in the White Mountains and will fulfill a 25-year master plan for the Mount Washington Auto Road.The 68-room, three-story structure is on the site of the former Great Glen Ski Lodge on the western side of New Hampshire Route 16, north and across from the Base Lodge of the Mount Washington Auto Road.

In addition to meeting a need for rooms in the Mount Washington Valley, the Glen House will also boost the economy with the hiring of up to 40 full- and part-time employees.

In 1861, when what was then known as the Carriage Road opened, the first Glen House in the area of the current Base Lodge was already nine years old. That Glen House was destroyed by fire, as were the next three after it.

In 2001, fire also claimed the Great Glen Ski Lodge, a fact not lost on Auto Road officials in the construction of the new Glen House, which is outfitted with sprinklers and other safety measures.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Glen House will be held at the hotel at 11 a.m. Wednesday, followed by a soft opening soon thereafter and a grand opening sometime in October.

The year-round hotel will be operated by Olympia Hotel Management and is owned by the Mt. Washington Summit Road Company, which itself is owned by four families, with the Libby family being the majority owner.

While overseeing the finishing touches at the hotel last week, Howie Wemyss, who is the Auto Road’s longtime general manager, said the Glen House is the culmination of a process that began in the 1990s. It was then the Libby family, who are the descendants of Elihu Libby, initiated a master plan for the extensive Auto Road property.

At the turn of the 20th century, Elihu Libby bought the Glen House and in 1906, he also purchased the Auto Road. Since that time, Wemyss said the ownership group led by the Libbys has worked to develop a comprehensive vision for what is called the oldest manmade attraction in America.

Beginning in the 1990s, that vision became a master plan which included building the Great Glen Trails Outdoor Center in 1994 and a new Glen House. The Auto Road’s proposal to build the hotel in 2007 was stymied by the 2008 recession but brought back in 2015 when it was approved by the Coos County Planning Board.

Ground was broken on the hotel in April 2017. Despite some weather-related delays, the structure, which was estimated to cost upward of $14 million, is now ready for guests, said Wemyss.

As they come into the hotel, guests will immediately be drawn to the first and most significant of the “wow” elements built into it: a lounge at the back of which is a soaring wall of glass. It offers unparalleled views of Mounts Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison. About half of the hotel’s rooms have balconies.

Moving back from the glass wall, visitors can visit the bar or sink into a cozy seat in the lounge, which features a fireplace topped by a faux moose head. “It’s made of cloth,” explained Wemyss, and is intended to be a conversation starter.

Also on the hotel’s first floor is The Notch Grille, a full-service restaurant that will be open to guests and the public seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It offers cuisine billed as “North Country favorites with a modern twist;” a pool; a thoroughly wired multi-purpose conference room; and a fitness center.

Wemyss concedes that the pool is small. And given the number of trails just outside the hotel, the adjacent fitness center filled with high-tech work-out machines seems a bit redundant.

Sustainability

Nonetheless, all the amenities, as well as Wi-Fi both inside and outside the hotel, have been provided to enhance the overall guest experience, said Wemyss, who added he is equally proud of some of things that are less visible.

For starters, the Glen House is built with sustainability in mind. It is believed to be the only hotel in New Hampshire to have a geo-thermal system for heating and cooling, said Wemyss, adding that part of the hotel’s current energy needs are being met partially from an existing hydro project at the Auto Road Base Lodge.

In several years, once the hotel’s energy consumption has been clearly defined, Wemyss said a solar array would be built to augment the power coming from across the street.

The hotel’s Otis elevators are also kind of neat, he said, because not only are they fast and quiet, they regenerate electricity in going up and down. He noted that waste heat that is generated in the hotel’s kitchen by walk-in refrigerators is captured and put back into the geo-thermal system.

That system reflects the Auto Road’s commitment to stewardship, said Wemyss. He noted that such a system, because of the larger upfront cost and longer break-even time, has often deterred other hotels in northern New England from using it.

“If you want to break even in seven years, you don’t go geo-thermal,” he said, but the Auto Road and the Libby family are firmly behind it.

“Everyone wants it (the new Glen House) to be profitable,” said Wemyss, “but after 112 years of family ownership, they (the Libbys) have the luxury of taking a longer view on the investment.”

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High-Profile’s September issue features a story on TFMoran’s 50th Anniversary

We invite you to check out High Profile‘s September issue featuring a story entitled “TFMoran Celebrates 50 Years”. Click on this pdf link High-Profile September 2018 Pages 30-31

Or, read the text below:

TFMoran Celebrates 50 Years

Bedford, NH – The year 2018 marks 50 years of service for TFMoran, Inc., a leading consultant to the land development industry, offering Civil, Structural, and Traffic Engineering, Land Surveying, Landscape Architecture, Construction Support, and Environmental Permitting services. Originally a local firm based in southern New Hampshire, TFMoran’s practice area now extends throughout the state and into Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Since its inception in 1968, TFMoran has been a leader in bringing innovative land planning and smart development practices into the marketplace. According to the firm’s president, Robert Duval, “TFMoran has been designing sustainable sites long before it became a buzzword. By their very nature, good designs reduce impacts to the natural environment, harmonize with their surroundings, make more efficient use of infrastructure, thereby saving our clients hard costs, as well as simplifying the approval process.”

The current ownership team has been in place since 2013, including President and Chief Engineer Robert Duval, PE; Chief Operating Officer Dylan Cruess, and Senior Vice Presidents Jeff Kevan, Paul Sbacchi, PE, and Corey Colwell, LLS, all long-term employees with decades of hands-on experience. Dylan Cruess comments, “The shared goal of the new ownership team has been to build on the strong corporate brand that TFMoran has created over the past fifty years, delivering best-in-class client service. We must be doing something right, because in 2016 we were named Business NH’s Business of the Year in the Real Estate, Construction and Engineering category, and we have also earned a statewide “Best of Business” award for the last six years in a row.”

Duval points out that TFMoran has built a strong reputation for successful redevelopment of under-utilized urban and industrial land: “We have played an integral role in many of the region’s most significant redevelopment projects, among them the SNHU Arena and the NH Fisher Cats Stadium in Manchester’s urban core; redevelopment of the Bedford Mall, Wayfarer Hotel, and former Macy’s properties in Bedford; the GE Aviation Plant expansion in Hooksett, conversion of several mill buildings in Lowell and Lawrence to residential/commercial use, and a new 1,700-car parking garage at the south end of Manchester’s historic millyard, currently under construction. Just these few projects alone provide hundreds of millions of dollars of new tax base and revenues to the local community,” says Duval.

In 2014, TFMoran acquired MSC Civil Engineers and Surveyors, a well-established civil engineering and surveying firm in Portsmouth, NH. Subsequently, in 2015, TFMoran expanded its structural engineering department by acquisition of Steffensen Engineering Associates with a solid 30-year history. “We have experienced strong growth over the past few years, to better serve our clients”, says Paul Sbacchi, Chief Structural Engineer. “They have their own tight schedules to meet, and we want to help them succeed.” The TFMoran team now comprises over 65 individuals, including licensed land surveyors, civil and structural engineers, landscape architects, wetland scientists, LEED professionals, and erosion control (CPESC) specialists.

Jeff Kevan, civil engineering group manager, points out that one of TFMoran’s primary strengths is taking on large projects with aggressive schedules. “Our team has demonstrated time and again the ability to meet challenging deadlines through teamwork and an innovative approach to the unique needs and opportunities for each project. Our reputation is built on our track record, and our record is evidence of the pride we take in what we do.”

How would you summarize the TFMoran philosophy? According to Duval, “We want to be leaders and innovators in our industry, taking on projects that have a positive impact on their surroundings. Every day, we are grateful for the opportunity to provide all these things while providing superior value to our clients, too.”

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