In 2018, a group of water resources engineers began meeting together in Asheville, North Carolina to explore opportunities for collaboration. Each of us had worked in consulting engineering for two decades or more, across the United States. Several of us had worked for large global corporations and three of us had founded and operated our own small consulting firms. As we shared stories, we all expressed disillusionment with the current paradigm of consulting. Firms are typically built around maximizing profit for owners, shareholders and investors. Even when company values are explicitly stated, they can often be overlooked, especially when they conflict with making profit.

So we began asking ourselves some fundamental questions about how we could do things differently, from the ground up, to make a greater positive impact on the environment, local communities and our work place. What if we started a firm that was not based on making profit at all, but rather on creating positive impacts in the world and creating right livelihoods for employees? And from these foundational questions, our vision of building a new kind of firm which consistently values people and planet over profit was begun: Blue Earth Planning, Engineering & Design, PC.