Kevin Haney, President & CEO, Colliers Engineering & Design

Infrastructure continues to be one of the biggest opportunities for companies like Colliers Engineering & Design. “We don’t see that stopping. I do think that no matter what, there will be funding for infrastructure because it’s a must-have, not a want-to-have,” Kevin Haney, president and CEO of Colliers Engineering & Design, told Invest:.

What were the key milestones and achievements for Colliers Engineering & Design during the last year?

Overall, it was a good year, although there have been some ebbs and flows. Residential housing, of course, significantly dropped off as interest rates went up. But other aspects of our business did well, offsetting the decline in residential. We’re diverse in what we do, with municipal and county services, including infrastructure, roads, and utilities and so on, and those areas continued to excel in 2024, and we see that continuing in 2025. Because of our diversification, while one discipline or one service line goes down, other service lines go up, and that stayed true in 2024. 

What projects have the highest impact on the community?

Some of the most transformational projects we’re working on are large redevelopments. For instance, there’s one in Sayreville, New Jersey, which has been going on for many years. It’s a big, super-fund redevelopment site called Riverton. It is a massive redevelopment project with thousands of residential units and millions of square feet of commercial space. Those larger redevelopment projects continue to keep moving forward. 

In 2024, some of the biggest projects that started moving forward were other big redevelopment jobs in the Hoboken area, in the northeastern part of the state. Those redevelopment jobs are transformational for New Jersey and economically impactful to the community itself. We’re doing a massive redevelopment project for the waterfront of Hoboken on behalf of the city of Hoboken, for example. It includes streetscapes, waterscapes, and walkways. 

How have ongoing economic changes impacted your business, if at all?

2024 was pretty impactful from an interest rate perspective. Higher interest rates impacted a lot of developers, and the real estate development world in general, not only from a residential perspective, but also from a commercial perspective. When the money got too expensive, a lot of those projects didn’t really make financial sense anymore. A lot of those projects were put on hold, delayed, or just stopped completely. 

The small reduction in interest rates toward the end of this past year sparked a little bit of momentum in the development world, but more importantly, people started to recognize that this is the new norm. People don’t anticipate interest rates going significantly lower again, so it normalizes itself over time. Now we’re starting to see momentum pick up again with commercial development. Developers are getting used to the cost of money, they’re changing their performance on the business model, and moving forward under those new ground rules, so to speak.

How is that impacting the residential part of the business?

From an overall housing perspective, that’s where we’re really starting to see a lot more of that momentum come back, especially on multifamily rental properties, multifamily housing, and age-restricted communities. The higher interest rates require you to have a greater density from a development perspective, which leads you to multifamily in the rental community. Affordable housing and age-restricted housing have also seen a pretty big push over the last year or so, and I expect that to continue throughout 2025 in New Jersey.

What strategies is the company employing to attract, retain, and develop talent within the organization in New Jersey?

The war for talent has been in place probably for the last four years or so, and it just continues to get tougher. It’s not becoming any less of a struggle to find talent in this industry. We’ve approached that problem in a couple of different ways. No. 1, we have strong staff development programs where we’re hiring more new college graduates. Our philosophy is to hire them out of college and then teach them what they need to know and self-grow them within Colliers Engineering & Design.

No. 2, we recognize that we need to prime that funnel of talent into our organization. We’ve significantly increased our internship program. In New Jersey alone, we’ll probably have 40 or 50 interns in our offices. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to bring back 70% to 75% of those interns to come to work for us after they graduate. That has helped us get that talent in the door. 

It is a challenge, of course, to have to wait a number of years to get the levels of experience that we need, but finding those individuals with five to 10 years of experience is not a practical solution to solve our workload demands.

What is the market demanding right now?

It’s a mix of multifamily for sale or rental – multifamily apartments or condos, and then there are the associated aspects of that, such as providing storage. With multifamily, you need storage facilities for people to put all their stuff in. 

Industrial is still going strong, although not quite as much as before. The big residential or the big multi-use redevelopment projects that focus on a live-work-play scenario are also interesting.

One of the things that kept us successful in 2024 was the demand for infrastructure projects – the roads, bridges, and utilities throughout the state of New Jersey because of the influx of people coming and going. There’s a significant influx of people coming from the state of New York to the state of New Jersey, although there’s also a big outflow of people leaving New Jersey and going further south. However, the density of the population within New Jersey continues to put a significant demand on infrastructure, which, from an engineering perspective, is great. A lot of money and effort are being put into infrastructure improvements. 

We don’t see that stopping. I do think that no matter what, there will be funding for infrastructure because it’s a must-have, not a want-to-have.