ms consultants inc.

Thomas F. Mosure founded ms consultants inc. (ms) in 1963 in Youngstown, Ohio, as a small firm specializing in transportation engineering. The business remains in the Mosure family today, with Thomas F.’s son, Thomas E. Mosure, having taken over the business in 1994. Thomas E.’s son, David Mosure, is now vice president of operations and construction services for ms, as well.

“I’ve been in this business since I was in diapers,” the younger Thomas laughs. “Really, though, we were children when my dad started this company in the ’60s. I was in seventh grade and I would go out with him to do a survey for a truck stop, things like that. I went to the University of Cincinnati and after I graduated my dad extended an offer. I took him up on it in 1978 and worked in Youngstown for 10 years. In 1988 I moved to the Columbus office.”

The company is considerably larger than it was when Thomas E. started out. The team operates out of nine locations across Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. “Ohio is our strongest market, followed by Pennsylvania,” he notes. “Between the nine cities, we have around 300 people working with us. We are a full-service engineering, architecture and planning firm. We have seven business units working in 35 technical areas. We package ourselves to fulfill all of our clients’ needs under one roof with one point of accountability. Clients in this day and age like full-service delivery. We focus on that and on trying to solve their problems. We chose a business unit structure as opposed to geographic structure. In our core business areas, we are able to better understand their problems and work through them, which is a very valuable aspect of our business.”

Diverse Design Services

One of the company’s largest divisions is in transportation engineering. In central Ohio, the group completed an environmental and location study in 2009 for the intersection of two major interstate highways, I-70 and I-71, through downtown Columbus. While there were many avenues to success, ms worked closely with the community to determine the best fit for the city.

“One of the largest concerns in projects like this is bridging the gap between the downtown core and adjacent communities,” he says. “We looked at cap alternatives, enhanced bridges and those kinds of alternatives. We have planned the major bridges to have up to 100 feet of additional width on each side for caps. We are designing the foundations so they can rent airspace when they cap them and put retail on top of bridges to create a space between downtown and German Village and the other communities. This offers a more seamless transition rather than a divide. We went through 300 public meetings, trying to get a buy-in among the Ohio Department of Transportation, the city, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, county and all the respective community groups.”

The firm’s water division, which includes major infrastructure design capabilities for water, wastewater and water resource infrastructure, has also been busy. “We have been working on a new water supply for Columbus,” Thomas E. explains. “It is an off-stream reservoir, where the city will temporarily impound the Scioto River and can pump up to 160 million gallons a day to fill the 9 billion-gallon reservoir. This will be the largest synthetically lined reservoir in North America. We are almost done and at the end of the project, we are saving the client about a million dollars in reservoir filling cost. They considered building the pump station at a reservoir 19 miles away, but we had the idea to use an inflatable dam rather than a permanent structure.”

 Changing Markets

The recession over the last few years has put many firms and contractors out of business, but ms managed to reduce the blow. “Coming out of the last four years, we were dragging our knuckles on the ground,” Thomas E. explains. “We were lucky we didn’t have to lay anybody off. Instead, we did a series of four-day workweeks every other week for a few months. We got hit early in 2007 to 2008. It looks like things are coming back. The government is spending money and banks are loosening up more money for the private sector. Last year we moved up from No. 300 to No. 261 on ENR’s list ranking the size of engineering architects.”

Emerging industries in the area are offering new, unique opportunities for ms. Many specialists predict that the energy industry in Ohio and Pennsylvania will continue to boom, in turn stimulating growth in the region.

“That is the industry we want to be involved in,” Thomas E. notes. “We have some oil and natural gas projects coming up over the next few months. Outside of that, we are looking for geographic expansion and maybe some new acquisitions. We want to get into other markets. There are a lot of positive signs for the recovery.”

As both the public and private sectors start to warm up, ms is pulling in more business. The company’s broad capabilities and longstanding expertise support a solid reputation in a number of industries. With a highly capable team, ms consultants inc. will continue to offer innovative solutions to a broad range of client needs for years to come, and likely through the next generation.

For more information about ms consultants inc., please visit: www.msconsultants.com.