Blog & Recent Projects

 24th National Tanks Conference & Expo organized by 
NEIWPCC, EPA, ASTSWMO, and CDLE in Denver, CO on September 16-18, 2013

COLUMBIA Technologies is pleased to announce our support for the upcoming 24th National Tanks Conference in Denver, CO with two presentations and an exhibit booth.

On Sunday, September 15, 2013, our CEO, John Sohl and Vista GeoScience's President, John Fontana, will present a pre-conference workshop Improved In-Situ Remediation using Advanced High Resolution Site Characterization Tools for Remedial Design Characterization and Advanced Injection Technologies from 1:00 - 5:00 PM.

On Monday, September 16, 2013, our CEO, John Sohl, will present Improving LUST Management through High Resolution Data on LNAPL and Permeability to Close Those Pesky Sites during the Advanced LNAPL Assessment I session from 1:30 - 3:00 PM.

COLUMBIA staff will be present at the 24th National Tanks Conference & Expo and will be pleased to meet you at Booth 219. If you would like to organize a meeting in advance, please contact Dov Hoffman at (888) 344-2704 ext. 207 or dhoffman@columbiatechnologies.com.

 On Wednesday, June 12, 2013, our CEO, John Sohl will present Leveraging Advanced High-Resolution Site Characterization Best Practices to Plan, Target, and Enhance Bioremediation Efforts during the Innovative and Developing Processes and Protocols platform session of the Methodologies for Planning and Evaluating Bioremediation track. This year, the Second International Symposium on Bioremediation and Sustainable Environmental Technologies will be conducted June 10-13, at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel in Jacksonville, FL. The Symposium is organized and presented by Battelle, and conference sponsors are other organizations active in site investigation and remediation.

COLUMBIA Technologies is pleased to sponsor the upcoming Environmental Industry Summit XI in San Diego, CA. The Environmental Industry Summit is a national three-day learning event bringing together professionals from the environmental industry. The Environmental Industry Summit offers a unique opportunity to gain valuable perspective on today’s environmental industry providing ample networking opportunities, presentations, and panel discussions from the industry’s lead executives and analysts.

Environmental Industry Summit XI is March 6-8, 2013 at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, CA. The 2012 EBJ awards will be presented at a special ceremony at the Environmental Industry Summit XI.

COLUMBIA Technologies CEO, John Sohl, will participate in the Executive Response Panel during the Environmental Industry Summit XI. During the Executive Response Panel, executives from 3-4 prominent firms will stress test the industry outlook and render opinions on how their companies will strategically and tactically address industry challenges. John will give perspective on how clean-up technologies are being used on different sites, and how they have evolved with the various challenges presented.

Environmental Business Journal® (EBJ), a business research publication which provides high value strategic business intelligence to the environmental industry, has honored 50 companies for revenue growth, acquisitions, innovative project designs, technology applications, new practice areas, social contributions and industry leadership in 2012.

COLUMBIA Technologies is pleased to announce that it was chosen to receive the EBJ award for International Expansion.

“In an industry that has just managed to out-perform the overall economy but still presents challenges in many segments, a number of companies have achieved double-digit growth, sustained high profitability, built solid backlog, made successful forays into new practice areas or geographic markets, or developed technologies that can build a more sustainable economy,” said Grant Ferrier, President of Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI, San Diego), Publisher of Environmental Business Journal. “Historically, EBJ has known COLUMBIA Technologies as an industry leader in site characterization, but it’s their recent expansion into Mexico and Brazil which has positioned them as a global expert in the field and the recipient of a 2012 EBJ Business Achievement Award.”

COLUMBIA was recognized for establishing operations and formal partnerships in both Mexico and Brazil, thereby expanding its business model into Latin America in 2012. Expanding into Mexico and Brazil extended COLUMBIA’s international portfolio to more than 1,000 global project opportunities throughout Canada, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and 45 out of the 50 United States, including Hawaii. In 2012, COLUMBIA successfully completed over 100 projects throughout North America including Hawaii, provinces in Canada, and in Brazil for 54 different clients, with 63% of those firms being repeat customers. Since 1999, COLUMBIA has contracted with 26 of 40 firms from the Environmental Business International’s top rated environmental consulting and engineering firms on a diverse range of commercial, federal, and military sites.

Article originally featured in the Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) Executive Review 2013 Issue, Volume XXVI, Number 1, 2013

 Columbia Technologies, LLC (Baltimore, MD), is a global provider of high-resolution direct sensing and mapping technologies, such as the membrane interface probe (MIP), laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), and the hydraulic profiling tool (HPT), for application in contaminated site characterization. Founded in 1999, the 17-employee company has successfully completed approximately 1,000 high-resolution site characterization surveys throughout Mexico, Canada, and 45 of the 50 states, including Hawaii, serving oil companies, government agencies, commercial real estate owners, developers, and architectural and engineering firms. John Sohl is the company’s CEO.

EBJ: What kind of year was 2012 in terms of revenue growth and profitability for your firm?

John Sohl: It was a good year. We had 20% revenue growth, and roughly 30% growth on the profit line. We had a good, solid set of projects that contributed to growth and profits.

EBJ: What client sectors and regions provided the best opportunities, and what factors were driving those opportunities? Any shifts in the sectors you’re serving?

J.S.: For what we do, the clients that are engaging in more complex projects, where the site characterization and remediation challenges are significant, that’s where we get our best match in terms of value proposition. They often tend to be petrochemical clients and manufacturers.

We did see a good amount of work in the Midwest, which has offered good growth through the resurgence in the economy. General Motors, Ford, and other manufacturers are trying to resolve issues with the assets on their books. I think we’ll see more and more positive impacts when cheap natural gas affects the petrochemical and manufacturers. These clients did do well.

There were no dramatic shifts in our client base. We maintain a fairly broad base, and we’re active in both the industrial sector and the Department of Defense (DOD) market. In the commercial market, if there has been any kind of shift, it’s been by reaching out beyond our traditional borders. In 2012, we’ve done a couple of projects in Hawaii. We have a partner in Mexico, and we’ve done some work in Canada, so we’re exporting our work on a regular basis.

Article originally featured on Tradeology, the official blog of ITA (International Trade Administration)

Doug Barry is a Senior International Trade Specialist in the Trade Information Center, U.S. Commercial Service within the International Trade Administration. 

John H. Sohl III is founder of Columbia Technologies, a Maryland company that maps underground pollution from large manufacturing facilities, oil terminals, pipelines and military bases. The company is a client of the Baltimore Export Assistance Center.

Barry:  How do you map underground pollution?

Sohl:  Mapping involves deployment of sensor technologies that track leakage and migration of pollutants.  Following analysis by our technicians, customers can make decisions on risk assessment, disposition of the property and proper cleanup actions.

Sohl:  I started the company about 15 years ago after doing similar work in the U.S. Navy.  I was always intrigued with the application of sensors and three-dimensional mapping of components, and that’s the approach we brought to the industry.  The world really is getting flat and many of our clients are global industries that have footprints both in the U.S. and North America as well as the globe.  So once we’ve established a good working relationship and reputation with those firms, they sought to bring us into other parts of the globe.

Barry:  So your initial market entry strategy was to piggyback on clients here in the U.S. and ride them into new markets.

COLUMBIA Technologies recently completed the Veteran Institute Procurement (VIP), a comprehensive training and certification program that helps veteran-owned businesses strengthen their ability to win government contracts and do business with both military and civilian agencies they once served in uniform.

On October 20, 2011, COLUMBIA Technologies was one of 45 businesses from 17 states to graduate from the National Center for the Veteran Institute for Procurement at the Bolger Center, a government-owned conference facility located in Potomac, MD. During the program’s graduation, John Sohl, CEO of COLUMBIA Technologies was presented with a congressional citation on behalf of U.S. House of Representatives Congressman, John P. Sarbanes.

     COLUMBIA Technologies is currently supporting our first high-resolution direct sensing project in Mexico City.  COLUMBIA’s direct sensing team landed in Mexico City in August to make a difference in the environmental industry on a global level and prove that real-time information can drive a project to satisfy regulatory requirements for investigation of contaminated sites.

Following the proven concept of stakeholder and regulatory involvement, systematic work planning, and dynamic work execution, these site investigations focused on providing a better understanding of how the results would impact the overall remediation scope and property disposition.

Article originally featured in the Environmental Business Journal (EBJ) Remediation & Redevelopment Issue, Volume XXIV, Number 3/4, 2011

 Throughout much of the approximately three-decade-old history of waste site cleanup, sub-surface site characterization has been something of a high-stakes gamble. You could install monitoring wells into the soil and groundwater, spending thousands of dollars per well while essentially guessing how best to develop a picture of where contamination has spread or where a groundwater plume is headed—and you could be wrong, prompting a costly revisiting of the site and possibly even lawsuits.

More recent history has seen the advent of high-resolution techniques that that have reduced the cost and improved the accuracy of sub-surface characterization. One company that has put those techniques to work at approximately 750 sites throughout its 10-year history is Columbia Technologies (Baltimore, MD), a provider of high-resolution direct sensing and mapping technologies such as the membrane interface probe (MIP), laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), the hydraulic profiling tool (HPT), a discrete groundwater profiler with on-site volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis, and associated data management tools for real-time information processing and visualization.

COLUMBIA Technologies CEO John Sohl looks back on the company’s experience at those 750 sites and sees three principles in play when it engages clients in today’s marketplace. First, “they want to define the issue, and not just produce data for data’s sake, and to keep regulators off their backs,” he says. Second, clients understand that better information leads to better decisions on cleanup and response. Third, “they’re saying, ‘I’d rather have an abundance of fairly close information and be approximately correct than be precisely wrong.’”

COLUMBIA Technologies has been recognized for their rapid expansion of their industry unique business model throughout North America with EBJ’s 2010 Business Achievement Award for New Practice Areas. In 2010, COLUMBIA Technologies extrapolated their “on call” business model into 29 states including Hawaii, increasing their total market penetration to 45 of 50 states; and into the provinces of Alberta and Ontario, Canada. Upcoming projects are in the planning stage for Mexico as well as Puerto Rico.

In 2010, COLUMBIA Technologies worked with 57 different clients throughout North America and Hawaii at over 100 project locations. They contracted with 10 out of 20, 15 out of 30, and 20 out of 40 from the Environmental Business International’s top rated environmental consulting and engineering firms on a broad range of commercial and military sites.“Our unique business model enables us to work with environmental, legal and property professionals throughout the United States and overseas while delivering cost-effective solutions to optimize site remediation” said John Sohl, Chief Executive Officer for COLUMBIA Technologies. “In previous years and certainly in 2010, we’ve proven that COLUMBIA is not limited to a specific geographic region and our primary focus is serving our clients on a nationwide scale.”