Founded in 1939, CDR Maguire has made its name as one of the leading consulting firms in the infrastructure support industry, a position it maintains as it continues to expand.

In 2022, the company purchased McTish, Kunkel and Associates (MKA), a longtime construction consulting organization, and set up a central Pennsylvania office in the former company’s Pine Street office space, said Wayne Swinehart Jr., Operations Manager for the site.

“I started here in early July of last year, following the acquisition of McTish,” Swinehart explained. “I already had a job, but it seemed like a good challenge and a good opportunity to help this grow.”

“I’ve been really working on getting the word out that we’re still here,” he said. “This is the same company that it’s been. Minus a few people that we brought in, this is the same staff that’s still capable of handling all the things that were in the past.”

The purchase of McTish was an attempt to expand CDR McGuire’s services statewide, according to Swinehart.

“At the time, CDR McGuire had offices, in our engineering division, in Pittsburgh and Mechanicsburg, so this was a good opportunity for us to provide support across the state for all of our clients and all the industries as well, because McTish was mostly focused on eastern Pennsylvania, with offices here and in Allentown,” Swinehart explained.

Parent company CDR Companies also has offices in Boston, Providence and Fort Lauderdale, with corporate offices in Miami, and has companies in the health industry, emergency services and laboratory services to name a few.

“CDR Engineering is a division of CDR Companies, and if I were to break our work into three categories, it would be transportation, construction and inspection, and civil site design,” Swinehart explained.

“A majority of the work at this office and our Allentown and Pittsburgh/Warrendale offices is in transportation,” he said.

“That includes highways, roadways, the turnpike, and a lot of PennDOT work. We provide survey engineering, design of bridges and the roadways themselves. We also do environmental work from permitting to wetland delineations, and we do construction inspection and construction management,” Swinehart said.

“As far as oil and gas, we focus mainly on civil design and stormwater, with a focus on survey and environmental as well,” he added.

“It’s how it goes in the consulting world. There’s an opportunity to do as many things as you can to support industries and obviously focus on certain areas.”

Swinehart looks at the company’s diverse set of disciplines as one of its strongest assets.

“You can do a lot of things right in house, instead of having to subcontract or find other companies to partner with, which still do occasionally,” Swinhart said.

CDR Maguire’s clientele includes not only PennDOT and municipalities, but also individuals and other companies.

“We do site development work, which includes making sure that all their permits are into DEP and basically taking care of the front end side to get the project set for them to start construction,” Swinehart said.

“A lot of times people don’t understand the amount of work that goes into those projects ahead of time. These are years of planning and prepping and permitting before ground is broken. It could take six months to a year to get some permits back and really you can’t finish the design until you have that permit in hand, so typically, by the time a project gets started, we’re well off and on to the next project,” he explained.

But for Swinehart such a long process really pays off once the project has reached completion.

“It’s very rewarding when you see this stuff on a screen in a two dimensional view, or just lines on a paper, but then when you can go back maybe a year or more later and see the product that you worked on for a significant amount of time there in front of you. It’s such a neat thing to see.”

Among the projects the company has supported is the CSVT project in the Lewisburg area and the Market Street Bridge.

And, while Swinehart said there is much respect and friendship among the various companies within the industry, there are factors that set CDR Maguire apart from the others.

“Where I think we have an advantage is we have a long standing business here. We were founded here, essentially,” he said.

“What we did was we brought in that small company feel with a big company backing, so where I think we like to separate ourselves is with our understanding and capability of supporting our clients,” he continued.

“When I go and talk to new clients, I like to help them understand that we’re not just going to do whatever they ask us to do, we’re going to say, ‘hey, are you sure about this, we have an idea here to help you save your money and find ways to improve your process,'” Swinehart said.