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Architectural and engineering firm Fishbeck is expanding its footprint in Indiana in a deal for a civil engineering firm.
The Cascade Township-based firm acquired Greencastle, Ind.-based Align CEC Inc. on Jan. 3. The Indiana civil engineering firm has experience in transportation design, water infrastructure, surveying and construction inspection.
“This gives us presence in a new area of the state we weren’t in and access to new clients that we didn’t necessarily have access to,” Jeff Schumaker, president and principal at Fishbeck told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. “We’re super excited to bring on 33 new great employees during a time where it’s really hard to find good help. We’re glad to have another group join our team.”
Fishbeck will maintain Align’s three offices located in Greencastle, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute.
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“The real advantage for us there is they can now operate as Fishbeck, which has much broader services than Align offers,” Schumaker said. “With the relationship they have with their clients, they can now sell a broader set of services and provide them with a greater service.”
Tom Gray, senior vice president of Fishbeck, called Align an “ideal partner.”
“Their addition to our team strengthens our ability to take on complex projects and deliver outcomes that exceed expectations,” Gray said in a statement. “We are excited about the opportunities this merger creates for our clients and our teams.”
All of Align’s employees will join Fishbeck’s staff of more than 670 people. The primary and two minority owners of Align now have ownership in Fishbeck and maintain leadership roles, Schumaker said.
“Fishbeck is a fully employee-owned firm and we see it as very important that the owners of Align also have ownership,” Schumaker said.
Fishbeck now has 19 offices across Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The acquisition adds to the company’s expertise in architecture, engineering, environmental consulting and construction management.
Discussions about partnering with Align began four or five years ago when Fishbeck had a presence of about four people in Indiana and was trying to get a foothold in the market, Schumaker said.
“One of the ways to do that is by partnering with other firms, and we reached out to Align and started some discussions about partnering. Through those discussions, we realized Align had a very similar culture to Fishbeck, treated their people similarly and took a similar approach to business and how we treated clients,” he said.
The two firms worked on several projects together and over the years Align’s leadership grew more open to talking about a merger or acquisition between the two firms, Schumaker said.
This will be at least the third acquisition Fishbeck has made over the last two years. The firm added Envirologic Technologies Inc. to its portfolio in 2023, and acquired MDA Engineering in 2024.
“We’re always open to looking for opportunities,” Schumaker said. “Right now, we need to regroup and make sure that we onboard these groups well and transition them well into the firm before we push forward with anything further.”
Schumaker said Fishbeck worked with its in-house counsel on the acquisition deal.
According to a 2025 outlook from consulting firm Deloitte, M&A activity in the architecture, engineering and construction sector “will likely be an important growth strategy for both large and small firms.” Deloitte tracked 528 deals in the industry from August 2023 to July 2024 that were valued at more than $38 billion, “which is more than three times the deal value from the previous year.”
Local, Grand Rapids-based architectural firm TowerPinkster also started this year by acquiring a civil engineering firm. Comprehensive Engineering’s 25 employees joined TowerPinkster’s downtown Grand Rapids office in a deal that closed Jan. 1.
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