Five Minutes with Matt Cummings, President/CEO of T.Y. Lin International

As the new president/CEO, what’s on your initial to-do list?

Number one is to get to know the people and the talent within TY Lin and its sister companies. I've been visiting many offices. We’ve got a storied brand that I’m excited and honored to be part of. We'll build on that legacy and work with our affiliated companies to take us to the next level. There's a few hundred items on the list.

How did TYLI do in the past fiscal year, and what are your goals for growth in the next one?

Overall we did well last year. Strong business with lots of opportunities. Always room for growth. My goals for next year are to build on what’s been done in last two years. We're looking to grow both organically and through some acquisitions.

Outlook for market ahead—can it keep growing? What are key risk factors?

I think we can expect growth in all sectors. We’re focused on aviation growth, terminal expansions. The transit market is very hot right now with local referendums and other measures. Across the board, the market is strong. I'm optimistic that federal funding will be resolved in some way. It's hard to say what form that will take, but the needs are quite obvious and pressing. The political will seems to possibly be coming together.

Where are you looking to grow in the U.S.? Are you looking to grow internationally as well?

There are locations where we could grow, such as Texas and the Southeast. Probably the Northwest and even into Canada. I’d like to see us get into the Toronto marketplace. That’ll happen through a combo of organic growth and targeted acquisitions.

What are some major pursuits specifically that you'll be looking at?

TYLI enjoys a reputation for solving the most challenging engineering problems, and our landmark projects, which include the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge New East Span in California and the Historic Niagara Falls State Park Transformation Initiative in New York, demonstrate that expertise. We just enjoyed the groundbreaking of the New 4th Bridge over the Panama Canal and are now looking at:

major transit programs in NY, LA, Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta.
Airport expansion from NY to South Florida and the West Coast. Latin American opportunities in airport and metro expansion.
And major bridges like MD Nice bridge, Vancouver Patullo, Alabama I-10, Golden Gate seismic retrofit, and throughout Asia and the Middle East.

You mention technological excellence. Can you provide some examples of what you’d like to see the firm employ technology-wise?

We’re a leader in innovation in bridge design. We have more opportunities as an industry and for us to execute our work and optimize resources through work-sharing and human knowledge best practices. My point on innovation is to expand on how we deliver our services in a fast-paced, global environment – using technology to connect people virtually, and systems that enable highly efficient design execution across our platform.

Will TYLI work with other DAR Group firms? In what ways?

We’re looking at a strategy where we bring the infrastructure firms within DAR closer together in a federation of companies. We do a lot more than bridges. With affiliate companies like Landrum and Brown and Ross & Barruzzini, we have a unique and powerful platform. We can enhance the synergy across the Asias and Americas. We are looking to expand on our current working relationships with affiliate companies, bringing the group closer together to provide a complete infrastructure offering to our clients. This will involve deeper sharing of resources, expertise and technology across the infrastructure platform and DAR group, enabling us to pursue and deliver larger and more complex projects globally.

We also partner with any of the top A&E firms. There are multiple angles – from huge amount of structurally deficient bridges that many states are packaging into bundles for repair and replacement.

We have a great brand, a storied legacy and culture. It’s about technical excellence and the strategy we are moving forward with to truly become a global player in a unique and differentiated way.

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

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