A group led by Bernhard Capital Partners has acquired ATC Associates Inc., a Lafayette-based environmental consulting, industrial hygiene and engineering firm, from Cardno Limited, the Australia-based global contractor that has owned it since 2012.
ATC Associates was founded in 1982 and provides environmental consulting, industrial hygiene, geotechnical engineering, government services and construction materials testing and inspections. It has 1,350 employees in more than 70 locations throughout the U.S. and revenues of around $180 million a year, according to CEO Bobby Toups., who is based in the company’s Lafayette corporate headquarters.
Under its new ownership, ATC Associates Inc. will maintain all 70 offices. Toups and the remainder of the company’s existing management team will remain in place with the company. No staff changes are expected.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Cardno paid $106 million when it acquired the company three years ago. Toups says while Cardno was a “a good group to work with,” the new ownership is a much better fit for ATC Associates.
“Jim Bernhard is an excellent businessman,” says Toups. “We’re really excited. To be privately held again, especially with a group of guys like the Bernhard guys, is great for us and will help us grow substantially.”
The ATC acquisition comes just a week after another significant acquisition by one of the portfolio companies under the expanding BCP umbrella. On Nov. 6, Bernhard LLC acquired The MCC Group, a 57-year-old Metairie-based mechanical and industrial construction company with a network of clients and fabrication facilities throughout the southeast. Bernhard LLC also owns Bernhard Mechanical, TME Engineering, and EP Breaux Electrical, making it one of the largest design-build mechanical, electrical and plumbing firms in North America.
With the addition of ATC Associates, BCP now has four separate portfolio companies: Bernhard LLC, Epic Piping, Brown and Root, and ATC Associates. All are run independently with independent management teams, many members of which worked under Jim Bernhard for years at The Shaw Group, which he founded and grew into an industrial services, engineering, utilities and environmental consulting powerhouse.
Bernhard retired from The Shaw Group in 2013, after it was acquired by CB&I. He founded BCP a few months later with several of his top executives from Shaw, and has spent the past two years creating a network of companies under BCP that rival what The Shaw Group did in size and scope.
—Stephanie Riegel
