KCI acquires RMC

HUNT VALLEY, Md.--KCI Technologies, one of the 100 largest engineering firms in the United States, announced this week the acquisition of Risk Management Consultants, which has been folded into the company as a new subsidiary, KCI Protection Technologies. RMC's former president, John Fannin, will head KCI-PT, which now provides specialized engineering services for security, fire protection, risk analysis, life-safety and emergency management. Fannin said KCI-PT will continue the work that RMC has been doing since 1985, roughly 50 percent of which focused on security technology design, but will broaden its approach to the market and serve a wider commercial base. "RMC had a significant amount of work in the chemical industry," he said. "With KCI, it's expanded into more traditional commercial markets, while maintaining an emphasis on industry and manufacturing ... There will be a lot of work in CCTV, and we have a unit devoted to helping end users comply with the Chemical Security Act." KCI-PT will not do any installation, nor will it subcontract for installation, Fannin said, but the company will design electronic security systems as part of larger plans that provide counter-measures to identified risk. "We would provide engineering oversight for equipment selection and acquisition," he said, "and we do a lot of that." KCI chairman and chief executive officer Terry Neimeyer said this may not always be the case. He said, for example, the KCI-Wireless division builds cellular towers as an outgrowth of previous engineering work, and KCI-Convergent Technologies began fiber installation following design work; "I can foresee that the security business could do the same thing for us, but instead of looking at design/build right away, we'll do design first and maybe get into build five years down the road ... and then we could be looking to do an acquisition or maybe look at organically growing." KCI Technologies expects, Neimeyer said, for security and risk assessment to become a significant portion of its business, which included roughly $123 million in revenues in 2006. The company employs 1,100 professionals in total, and roughly 120 of those are dedicated to KCI-PT currently, including some partners with specialized expertise not employed full time by KCI. "We're approaching the market from a technical perspective," Fannin emphasized.