Broadbent & Associates transitions leadership, bridges gaps for clients

The leadership transition at longtime Reno civil engineering and environmental consulting firm Broadbent & Associates is about as seamless as any business could hope for.

Current President Randy Miller took over the top position at Broadbent & Associates in August. Former President Doug Guerrant, who led the company for nearly 14 years, moved into the role of vice president as he begins transitioning into retirement.

The duo have worked shoulder-to-shoulder for nearly 30 years, though, and have adjacent offices.

“It’s very humbling to be in this role,” Miller told NNBW during an interview at Broadbent’s Louie Lane headquarters. “Going forward, I see nothing but opportunity, and creating opportunity is what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s so inspiring to me. Not only does it make our employees better, but you can see the great work we do as a result.”

Doug Guerrant

 

Miller has had all of three jobs in his professional career — he’s spent the last 30 years with Broadbent & Associates after completing an internship and spending one year working for a mining consulting company after graduating from the Mackay School of Mines in the 1990s.

Miller isn’t an outlier, though. Longevity is the norm at Broadbent & Associates, Guerrant said.

“Sixty percent of our company, this was their first job, and they are still here,” he said. “It’s been a pretty simple handoff.”

Guerrant plans to stay on with Broadbent for a few more years in a part-time role focusing on special projects.

Broadbent & Associates was founded by Bob Broadbent in Boulder City. The early days of the business were little more than two opposing desks in the back of a barbershop, Guerrant said.

“It kind of built up from there,” he said. “(Bob) had a vision on how to grow a company that was a great place for people to work and grow together.”

By 2000, Broadbent had opened a second office in Reno. Bob Broadbent retired in 2001, and handed the reins to Rob Miller, who stepped away in 2010 after several decades with Broadbent. Guerrant took over as president and ushered the company out of the tail end of the Great Recession until Randy Miller (no relation) stepped in this past August.

Randy Miller

 

The Broadbent name carries a great cachet in Las Vegas. Robert Broadbent spent more than 40 years in public service roles in Clark County, including four terms as a Clark County Commissioner before serving as director of aviation for McCarran International Airport in the 1908s and ’90s, where he oversaw more than $1 billion in improvements that helped transformed the airport — and the city — into the international travel hub it is today.

“His name has always been special to me and to Nevadans across the board,” Miller said.

Broadbent & Associates currently employs about 130. The company specializes in three categories: environmental due diligence on commercial properties, which also includes work in permitting and cultural resources; compliance, which includes testing and sampling for soil, groundwater and air quality; and remediation, which involves contamination assessment and remediation.

The diversity of services helped Broadbent weather the last recession without having to reduce its headcount, Guerrant noted.

“We started this company primarily as an environmental petroleum hydrocarbon company mostly doing underground storage tank work,” he said. “We caught that wave, but we saw it was going to crest in the late 1990s, so we made the conscious decision to diversify our services.

“We hired a lot of good folks to help us with that approach, and it has returned in spades. For a fairly small company in this industry, we offer a pretty broad suite of services that keeps us challenged and growing. Just as Reno has made a real concerted effort to diversify its industrial base, I feel that we kind of did the same thing on a smaller scale on a parallel tract.”

Broadbent performs all three of its service lines for clients in the mining industry and recently inked a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its restoration of abandoned mine sites program. Broadbent will help enhance and expand the Corps AML database processes and facilitate communication between stakeholders. The contract is for one year with four optional years.

The company has a heavy presence across the mining industry, said Miller, who also sits on the board of directors for the Nevada Mining Association.

“Right now there is a workforce shortage in mining, and they may not have enough staff to cover what their permits require,” Miller said. “Our people help with different sampling work and bridge different kinds of gaps. If there’s an influx of work, we can help with that, and we can go away when we are not needed.”

Although acquisitions are common among small and mid-sized environmental consulting and civil engineering firms, Broadbent remains committed to its independence through private ownership, MIller said.

“We get approached all the time,” he said. “There’s a huge trend in our industry for venture capitalists to come in when there are one or two owners in a company and their transition plan is to retire and sell, or it could be an acquisition by a large multinational conglomerate that wants to get into Nevada.

“What happens is that the culture changes, and the local knowledge we possess starts to disappear. The focus shifts from creating opportunities for our employees and delivering the best product we can for our clients to, ‘How do we make more money and return on investment?’ We have a broad group of owners, and we are not set up for sale; it’s not our model.”

Despite his longevity with Broadbent, Miller is only 52, so he’s not too overly concerned with the company’s future leadership.

“We were lucky to have many different options in our company to assume the role that I have now,” Miller said. “I feel honored and humbled that our group has the faith in me to be their leader. We have not identified our next successor, but I look forward to doing that and working very closely with our folks on what that looks like.”