ERM Co-founder Kent E. Patterson Retires
He had been serving as the managing principal of ERM's Northeast and Midwest Operations in the U.S.
Patterson had worked for nearly 30 years in the environmental consulting business. He spent the past 22 helping to build ERM to global prominence. "Kent joined me as ERM's 2nd employee in 1977 when ERM was just getting started in the Exton, PA, area," remarked Paul H. Woodruff, founder of ERM.
In appraising his role in the environmental industry, Patterson ventured that "The pressures on our global ecosystem are at critical levels, especially when we look at world population growth [which reached 6 billion in October], climate change and increasing energy consumption," warned Patterson. "We must find a way to balance and manage these pressures and the resultant environmental issues. These issues are world scale and are not currently being addressed. That's all yet to come."
Patterson thinks we now need to look at environmental problems on a macro rather than on the traditional micro basis. He would like to be actively involved in dealing with these issues after retiring.
He believes, "the concept of sustainable development can be employed, through policy and engineering, to improve the environment. If we don't plan for positive sustainable development, Mother Nature will make it happen, but with a very negative impact."
Patterson grew up in Manchester, OK (near the Kansas border.) He holds both a BS in civil engineering and an MS in bio-environmental engineering from Oklahoma State University. After graduating, he worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, followed by five years with the Roy F. Weston environmental consulting firm. He joined Paul Woodruff in 1977 to start up ERM. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in 10 states.
He has served on the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia for the past five years and is chairing the Science Task Force for the academy.
He and his wife will continue to reside in Malvern, PA.
ERM is a global environmental, health and safety management and consulting organization of 2400 specialists at more than 120 locations in 34 countries. Services provided to industry and government include air-quality and hazardous-waste management, compliance assurance and sustainable development consulting.
Contact: ERM, Lisa Lazorko. Tel: 610-524-3400; E-mail: mkt_info@erm.com.
Edited by Paul Hersch