McFarland Johnson, an established engineering and planning firm, has announced the launch of a new landscape architecture practice led by Jason Dunn, according to Vermont Business Magazine. The move expands the firm's in-house service offering and signals a broader industry pattern: traditional engineering houses are folding design and environmental disciplines into a single integrated team.
For practicing civil and structural engineers, this is more than a staffing announcement. It reflects how clients increasingly expect a single firm to deliver coordinated infrastructure, site design, and environmental outcomes — and it has practical implications for how project teams are structured, scoped, and delivered.
Landscape architecture is no longer limited to aesthetics and planting plans. Modern practice overlaps heavily with civil engineering concerns: stormwater management, grading and earthwork, erosion control, green infrastructure, and the increasingly important demands of climate resilience. When a firm offers both engineering and landscape architecture under one roof, the technical handoffs that traditionally cause friction — drainage assumptions, finished grade conflicts, utility routing through planted areas — can be resolved internally rather than across contractual boundaries.
For a firm with strong transportation, water, and infrastructure roots, adding landscape architecture closes a common gap. Roadway, bridge, and site projects routinely require streetscape design, stormwater treatment features, and community-facing public spaces. Keeping that work in-house improves coordination and gives the firm ownership of the full design narrative from grading to greenery.
The integration of design disciplines changes day-to-day collaboration for engineers. When landscape architects sit on the same team, civil engineers benefit from earlier input on grading, surface treatments, and bioretention features that affect hydraulic calculations. Structural engineers working on retaining walls, planters, pedestrian structures, and rooftop or podium landscapes gain a partner who understands loading from soil, water, and vegetation rather than treating those elements as afterthoughts.
This trend also reinforces the value of shared digital workflows. Multidisciplinary firms increasingly depend on common BIM and GIS environments so that civil grading models, structural elements, and landscape designs reference the same datum, alignment, and survey base. Misaligned models between disciplines remain one of the most expensive sources of rework, and bringing landscape architecture in-house only raises the stakes for coordinated data management.
The strongest argument for integrated practices is reduced interface risk. Every contractual boundary between firms is a potential gap where assumptions diverge — on grades, drainage capacity, or load paths. Internal teams can iterate faster and catch conflicts before they reach the field.
There is also a regulatory and environmental driver behind moves like this. Stormwater regulations, green infrastructure mandates, and climate adaptation requirements increasingly push civil projects toward nature-based solutions — bioswales, permeable surfaces, constructed wetlands, and vegetated detention systems. These solutions live at the intersection of hydraulics, soils, structures, and planting design.
Engineers who once treated landscaping as a separate, downstream package now find that the success of a stormwater permit may hinge on landscape-driven features. Having that expertise embedded in the project team allows the engineering analysis and the design intent to evolve together, rather than being reconciled after the fact. For firms competing on resilient and sustainable infrastructure, the combined capability is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator.
Not every firm can hire a dedicated landscape architecture lead, but the underlying lesson applies broadly. Clients value teams that can speak across disciplines and deliver coordinated outcomes. Smaller civil and structural practices can capture some of this advantage through strong consultant partnerships, shared modeling standards, and tools that make cross-discipline data exchange efficient. The goal is the same as a large firm's integration play: minimize the gaps where coordination errors hide.
At RHCES, we see this reflected in how engineers increasingly want calculation and estimating tools that connect cleanly to broader project workflows — bridging quantities, structural checks, and site data without manual re-entry. Whatever the firm size, the direction of travel is clear: integrated, well-coordinated delivery wins.
Source: news.google.com