Ayres uses a “triple bottom line” methodology in integrating sustainability into its designs for public and private sector clients.

Environmental: Ayres has successfully integrated green spaces, renewable energy solutions, and sustainable transportation systems into community landscapes. One example that spans numerous projects per year is our firm’s work with communities on brownfield efforts. We conduct various assessments, complete redevelopment reports, and help communities implement cleanup and revitalization of brownfield sites. Additionally, our team has conducted numerous landscape design and regulation update efforts that work to reduce water waste and promote xeriscaping.

Economic: Strategic economic management is key to sustainable development. Our approach ensures that projects are not only environmentally sound but also economically viable.

Social: Ayres is committed to creating spaces that include and appeal to everyone and that reflect the wide range of needs among residents and visitors in the communities we serve. Our initiatives truly support providing access for everyone to resources, opportunities, and services, ensuring that all voices are heard and valued.

To revitalize blighted places, an environmental consultant brings experienced scientists, engineers, and planners together to provide honest, streamlined information to guide a client through all the financial, liability, and site access issues. That consultant needs to have a trustworthy reputation with regulators and the dozens of grant and loan programs that can help make brownfield remediation a reality, paving the way for properties to contribute to communities' tax rolls and reputation. Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the Economic Development Administration, and Rural Development are among the many funding sources communities and developers can tap for brownfield redevelopment.

Soil and water contamination demands proper attention, but the remediation and monitoring process needn't become a huge distraction. An experienced consultant can take care of investigation, remediation design, implementation, monitoring, and reporting. An excellent consultant will act quickly, but only after considering all effective cost-cutting alternatives that fit a particular site – excavation and soil treatment through land spreading, incineration, landfilling, and biocells; soil vapor extraction; and groundwater treatment through air sparging/vacuum extraction, air stripping, aeration, carbon adsorption, ion exchange, and biological methods.

A professional consultant will review spill control plans and employee training plans for compliance with 40 CFR Part 112. The consultant will visit the site to determine SPCC plan needs, containment capacities, and spill pathways, and they review past spill events. They then update and certify plans, which can include facility layout, secondary containment, spill reporting procedures, training, inspection checklists, security, spill response measures, and fuel transfer procedures.

Ayres boldly goes where no one wants to go, providing wastewater collection system monitoring that consists of confined space entry, live flow monitoring, sampling, corrosion assessment, and concrete and metal deterioration analysis. These services allow municipalities to manage risk and save considerable money by determining when system renovations are needed – before they become a considerable repair and cleanup issue.

A consultant with a wide range of development services under one roof can take care of the following – whether it’s for a single site or an entire business park: survey, staking, stormwater design, permit filing, parking lot and utilities design, and grading and erosion control plans. Large developments require roadway layout and design, utility systems planning and design, street lighting, and signage.

Professionally collected, highly detailed aerial imagery can be used for a broad range of engineering and environmental applications, capturing natural color and infrared (IR) bands. The IR band is well-suited for mapping tree canopies, locating invasive plant species, and capturing aquatic vegetation.

That imagery can be delivered as large- and small-scale orthoimagery in panchromatic, color, and color infrared, with ground resolutions as detailed as 2 inches.

Imagery can also be used for high-accuracy photogrammetric map compilation of topography and planimetric features. Detailed planimetrics (such as buildings, roads, utilities, hydrography, and impervious surfaces) can be collected in conjunction with digital terrain models and contours for a myriad of engineering applications for departments of transportation (DOTs), municipalities, and utility companies.

Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a remote-sensing technology that produces surface models from measured laser pulses emitted from a helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft to capture each point’s precise location laterally and in terms of elevation. The data captured from these sensors supports high-accuracy digital terrain models and extraction of detailed planimetric information. Ayres applies these systems to a range of applications, including electrical transmission and distribution, floodplain and stormwater management, municipal mapping, transportation design, and forest canopy analytics.

Tripod-based terrestrial HD lidar scanning is suitable for generating as-built surveys for electrical transmission and distribution, modeling of conductor crossings, substation mapping, building infrastructure, and industrial asset management.

A multidisciplinary engineering firm such as Ayres is best at understanding how GIS applications can streamline the use of transportation, utility, and municipal engineering information because such a firm has used the resulting mapping products in its design work. Ayres’ staff has experience in many GIS and CAD platforms, including ESRI ArcGIS, MicroStation, Intergraph, and AutoCAD. We also offer expertise in developing interactive and static exhibits along with expert testimony for GIS-based analysis.

Integrated GPS and depth sounding equipment is used to collect data from boats to complete a hydrographic survey. Combined with our variety of watercraft, this equipment allows a consultant to map the shallowest of waterways. Hydrographic data is integrated with photogrammetric mapping for seamless topographic maps. Ayres has provided hydrographic surveying services in California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Bridge scour is a phenomenon by which high-velocity water removes streambed material from around a bridge’s foundations, creating holes in the river bottom that erode support and, in varying degrees, compromise the integrity of the entire structure. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires U.S. bridges to be inspected above water every two years and below water every five years. Those showing evidence of scour need to be inspected yearly, both above and below water, until repaired, replaced, or re-evaluated.

Ayres is a recognized leader in bridge scour evaluations, having assisted the FHWA and the National Highway Institute (NHI) in developing and teaching three ongoing scour training courses, including NHI's Stream Stability and Scour at Highway Bridges for Bridge Inspectors (course 135047). Ayres has provided field evaluations and development of scour evaluation reports for more than 1,500 bridges in numerous districts of the Florida DOT and was instrumental in assisting FDOT in conducting its scour evaluation program. The firm has evaluated scour in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Georgia, as well as throughout the Midwest and West.

Whether ravaged by floods or struck by trucks or barges, bridges need immediate inspection when their condition is suddenly in doubt. Ayres has this experience, as its inspection teams have sprung into action in a variety of circumstances, mobilizing crews within hours to sites throughout Florida after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and to sites in Atlanta after the 2009 floods, as well as offering assistance in Colorado during the 2013 flooding.

Many factors contribute to traffic crashes. Traffic consultants not only find the locations where hazardous crashes have occurred, but also identify substandard locations where crashes could occur if improvements aren't made. Traffic engineers and analysts gather crash reports, conduct site visits to document hazards in the roadway, review lighting, study crash patterns, and prepare user-friendly intersection and segment crash diagrams.

At Ayres, traffic engineering staff superimpose segment collision diagrams onto plan and profile sheets to identify hazards caused by hills and curves along a street or highway.

Also known as context-sensitive design, the "complete streets" concept acknowledges that street design is not a "one size fits all" proposition. Well-designed urban streets provide safe travel by all users – pedestrians, bicyclists, people with disabilities, public transit, autos, and trucks. Good street design also should be a collaborative effort among land use planners, engineers, and community groups, and it accounts for land accessibility, traffic operation, on-street parking, aesthetics, safety, landscaping, building setbacks, and intersection controls.

Traffic engineers can help keep traffic moving smoothly, saving drivers fuel and time. Tools include optimization software such as Synchro, TRANSYT-7F, PASSER, and TEAPAC. Signal timing plans are tested using microsimulation software such as SIMTraffic, CORSIM, or PARAMICS before implementation, reducing the potential of having to rework plans. Studies show the benefits of signal timing outweigh the costs by 40:1, and polls of motorists show support for improved signal timings.

In addition to reducing traffic delays 75%, roundabouts cut overall traffic crashes 39% and fatal or incapacitating injury crashes 90%, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. That’s partly because they cut down the number of possible conflict points in an intersection. A quality traffic and transportation engineering consultant will evaluate whether a roundabout is the best solution for a site and conduct modeling of a proposed roundabout’s operation to show comparative performance. Ayres is not new to roundabouts. We've designed single- and multilane roundabouts, and we've helped communities to educate the public on the safety and simplicity of roundabouts.

New Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rules took effect in 2022 requiring periodic comprehensive assessments of hydroelectric dams. Ayres was among the initial consulting firms properly equipped to conduct assessments according to the new requirement for deeper risk assessments – requiring approximately 10 times the effort of previous dam assessments while also taking two years to complete, compared with a few weeks under the old rules. Essentially the new assessments require experts to ignore previous assumptions and inspection reports and instead gather as much historical information as possible. Among the tools used are two-dimensional floodplain modeling, aerial lidar, bathymetric data, public inventories of nearby buildings, census data, GIS, drone flights, local libraries, construction records, reviews of past dam failures, and evaluation of dams that have withstood the test of time.

An engineering consultant that specializes in hydraulic analysis and river engineering can combine field reconnaissance with computer and physical hydraulic modeling to deliver solutions. Ayres is a firm whose expertise is recognized by federal clients, partly because the firm has written river engineering design manuals and standards that are in use nationwide. A capable firm goes beyond traditional riprap to provide lasting channel protection. After a thorough geomorphic investigation documenting channel conditions, a consultant designs customized bank stabilization, restoration, and river engineering structures. Innovative solutions include partially grouted riprap, articulated concrete block and fieldstone streambed linings, fish-friendly pool-and-riffle beds, concrete A-jacks bank protection, fabric-encapsulated slopes, embedded root wads, soil trenches, and native seed mixes.

Hiring a specialized consultant with watershed hydrology and water quality evaluation experience can help lake associations and districts evaluate lakes and identify changes in water quality. Available services include management plans, aquatic plant surveys, lakeshore owner surveys, lake sampling, grant applications, watershed modeling, dam and spillway design, dam break analysis, shoreline restoration, and runoff water quality improvement.

Developed by Xcel Energy and engineers at Ayres, the award-winning hinged floating bulkhead has become a valuable tool, particularly in dewatering tainter gates for rehabilitation and testing. The system has been used at projects across the nation to safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively dewater spillway gates and powerhouse intakes. The bulkhead caissons can be launched from shore, floated to the structure, and then filled – section by section – with water to quickly close off and dewater each gate for inspection and/or maintenance.

This designation means that the wetland delineator who holds this designation can move wetland delineation reports through the approval process more quickly than other delineators. Wetland delineation reports sent to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources by an assured wetland delineator are approved without the usual WDNR field verification that must be done for reports submitted by other wetland delineators, saving clients up to 60 days on approvals, as well as related fees charged for these verifications.

Following are the four quality levels of subsurface utility engineering, as defined by the Federal Highway Administration:

Quality Level D: The most basic level of information for utility locations. Comes solely from existing utility records or verbal recollections; both typically are unreliable sources. Useful primarily for project planning and project site selection.

Quality Level C: Commonly used level of information. Involves surveying visible utility facilities (e.g., manholes, valve boxes, etc.) and correlating this information with existing utility records. Often this information shows that many underground utilities have been omitted or erroneously plotted. Useful primarily for rural projects where utilities are not prevalent or are not too expensive to repair or relocate.

Quality Level B: Involves the application of surface geophysical methods such as electromagnetic locating or ground penetrating radar to “designate” the existence and horizontal position of all utilities within the project limits. Information obtained is surveyed to project control. Addresses problems caused by inaccurate utility records, abandoned or unrecorded facilities, and lost references. Information can be used for preliminary engineering decisions regarding location of storm drainage systems, footers, foundations, and other design features to avoid conflicts with existing utilities. Slight adjustments in design can produce substantial cost savings by eliminating utility relocations.

Quality Level A: Known as “locating,” this level provides the highest accuracy and involves full use of SUE services. Provides information for the precise plan and profile mapping of underground utilities through the nondestructive exposure of underground utilities. Also provides the type, size, condition, material, and other characteristics of underground features.

If you want a cookie-cutter result, go with a landscaper. A highly skilled landscape architect provides an aesthetically pleasing complement to the buildings and roadways on a site. Their design reflects the quality and character of an area rather than just being an afterthought that feels out of place. Ayres works with clients to understand the desired "feel" of the facilities, with the goal of providing beautiful, functional, accessible, and sustainable (low-maintenance) spaces.

Most urban redevelopment design projects involve the same principles but different applications – all underpinned by safety. Common components include:

• Enhanced walkability
• Climate friendliness/shade structures (for warmer climates like Florida)
• Convenient parking options, including electric charging stations
• Programming to activate the streets
• Public art
• Bike facilities
• Pedestrian crossings
• Sustainable elements
• Street configurations

The following programs offer grants and loans to finance a range of projects. Ayres has helped clients win approximately $300 million in funding through these sources:

Federal

Federal Emergency Management Agency

• Flood Mitigation Assistance Program
• Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program

U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development

• Planning Grants
• Rural Energy for America Program
• Water and Wastewater Program
• Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

• Section 154 Environmental Infrastructure Assistance

U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration

• Public Works and Economic Development Program

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs

• Bureau of Indian Affairs Invasive Species Program

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation

• WaterSMART Program

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey

• 3D Elevation Program

U.S. Department of Transportation

• Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program: Neighborhood Access and Equity (NAE)

U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration

• Railroad Crossing Elimination (RCE) Program

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

• Brownfield Grants
• Special Appropriations
• EPA-319 Non-Point Pollution Control Stormwater Grants

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

• Sport Fish Restoration Program

U.S. National Park Service

• Land and Water Conservation Fund

Colorado

Colorado Hazardous Materials & Waste Management Division

• Department of Public Health & Environment Colorado State Brownfields 1306 Program

Colorado Department of Local Affairs

• Crime Prevention through Safer Streets Grant
• Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund (EIAF) Grant
• Innovative Affordable Housing Strategies Grant
• Main Street Open for Business Grant
• Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI) Program
• Transformational Affordable Housing, Homeownership, and Workforce Housing Grant

Colorado Department of Transportation

• Revitalizing Main Street Grant

Florida

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

• Florida Boating Improvement Program

Minnesota

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

• Dam Safety Grants

Wisconsin

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

• Dam Removal Grant Program
• Environmental Repair Fund
• Green Space and Public Facilities Grant
• Ready for Reuse Brownfield Grants
• Targeted Runoff Management Grant
• Urban Non-Point Source Construction Grant
• Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District Green Infrastructure Partnership Program
• Municipal Flood Control Grant Program
• Municipal Dam Grant Program
• Urban Non-Point Source Stormwater Grant
• Recreational Trails Act
• Recreational Boating Facilities (Wisconsin Waterways Commission
• Clean Water Fund Grant
• Safe Drinking Water Grants
• Brownfield Site Assessment Grants (SAG)
• Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program – Acquisition and Development of Local Parks
• Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program – Land and Water Conservation Fund & Recreational Trails Program

Wisconsin Department of Administration, Division of Energy, Housing, and Community Resources

• Community Development Block Grant Revolving Loan Fund Closeout Program (CDBG-CLOSE)
• Community Development Block Grant Public Facilities for Economic Development (CDBG-PFED)
• CDBG Planning Grant Program (CDBG-PLNG)
• CDBG Emergency Assistance Program (CDBG-EAP)
• CDBG for Public Facilities (CDBG-PF)

Wisconsin Department of Administration

• Wisconsin Coastal Management Program

Wisconsin Department of Transportation

• Harbor Assistance Program
• Local Bridge Replacement Program
• Local Roads Improvement Program (LRIP)
• Agricultural Roads Improvement Program (ARIP)
• Multimodal Local Supplement (MLS) Program
• Municipal Street Discretionary Improvement Program (component of Local Roads Improvement Program)
• Surface Transportation Program – Local (STP-L)
• Surface Transportation Program – Urban (STP-U)
• Transportation Alternatives Program – Safe Routes to School (SRTS)
• Transportation Enhancement Grant or Transportation Economic Assistance Grant

Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

• Idle Sites Redevelopment Program
• Community Development Investment Grant (CDI)
• Wisconsin Site Assessment Grant (SAG)
• Brownfields Grant (formerly Blight Elimination Brownfield Redevelopment (BEBR) Grant

Wisconsin Focus on Energy

• Renewable Energy Incentives

Milwaukee Economic Development Corporation

• Brownfield Site Assessment Matching Grant Program

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

• Land Recycling Loan Program

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and EPA Great Lakes Repair Initiative

• Clean Water Fund Loan Program
• Safe Drinking Water Loan

Wyoming

Wyoming Business Council

• Wyoming Community Development Block Grant for Economic Development

Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments

• Wyoming Mineral Royalty Grant

Wyoming State Parks

• Land and Water Conservation Fund Grant Program