Our Projects: 2024 Corporate Progress Report

At Thornton Tomasetti, we report each year on several indicators of the breadth of our work on socially responsible and sustainable projects. Tracking these key metrics helps us chart our progress toward our goal of enabling decarbonization and expanding resilience through our projects.

#15 on ENR's Top 100 Green Buildings Design Firms

Engineering News-Record’s annual ranking is based on the year’s design or construction revenue from projects that are green-building registered or certified by an independent rating organization, such as GBCI/LEED. Thornton Tomasetti continues to rank among the top 20 firms and is moving closer to a slot in the top 10.

$172M Revenue From Projects Registered or Certified by a Third-Party Sustainability Program

Since 2020, we’ve doubled our annual revenue from projects registered or certified through the LEED program or other third-party sustainability certifications. This revenue isn’t limited to projects on which we provided LEED, Living Building Challenge, Passive House or other green building certification consulting, but includes all our work.

905 total Sustainability Consulting Projects

Thornton Tomasetti began offering sustainability consulting in 2012. Since first reporting our project numbers in 2018, we’ve provided sustainability services – such as energy modeling, net-zero strategies, life-cycle assessment and green building consulting certifications – for 905 projects. They encompass everything from dormitories to airports to community master plans and are located around the world. Our sustainability, resilience, and energy specialists collaborate seamlessly, delivering climate-ready strategies grounded in performance, adaptability, and long-term value.

52 Sustainability & Resilience Staff

As our sustainability and resilience work grows across new geographies and project types, the positive social and environmental impact of our projects is amplified. In 2024, the number of sustainability and resilience professionals on our team grew to 52. In the United States, they’re spread among our offices in Boston, New York, Portland (Maine), Chicago, Milwaukee and San Francisco. And internationally, we have staff in London and in Chennai, India. By 2030, we aim to achieve 50% growth in our team and expand to at least three additional locations.

233 Employees With Green Building Accreditation

As of 2024, 233 of our employees have a green building or broader sustainable design accreditation. These include LEED Green Associate (GA), LEED Accredited Professional (AP) and other sustainability accreditations, such as WELL Accredited Professional (AP) and Envision Sustainability Professional (SP). This number is on the rise as we increase the size of our sustainability staff, and the total also includes other professionals within the firm who find it useful to have the accreditation and the knowledge it imparts.

48 Structural Projects Reported to SE 2050

In 2020, we joined the Structural Engineers 2050 Commitment (SE 2050) as an inaugural member and have met our reporting requirement each year since – with 48 projects submitted in 2024. We’ve contributed 7.5% of all submissions by member firms. Before 2020, we measured embodied carbon for more than five years as part of an R&D project. We shared that data as a member of the AIA 2030 Commitment and as a research partner of both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Carbon Leadership Forum. As we broaden our embodied-carbon assessment training for all our structural engineers, we will increase the number of projects in our annual embodied-carbon calculations. We aim to measure embodied carbon in all our structural projects, with reduction of emissions as our target.

$3.5M Research & Development Spending

Our R&D spending includes staffing and other expenses for CORE studio, our virtual idea incubator. It also supports traveling innovation tournaments that identify and fund ideas from employees across the firm. We continue to prioritize R&D in pursuit of our long-term goal of becoming the global driver of change and innovation in our industry. In 2024, we saw a significant rise in R&D funding and a record number of proposals from staff. Funded projects were diverse, covering everything from risk assessment for onshore wind turbines to the use of machine learning for thermal analysis.