August/September 2014

COMMUNITIES: PRIVATE PRACTICE
For NSPE Member, His Engineering Firm is a Family Affair

ARORA

Building a successful engineering firm from the ground up is difficult, and yet NSPE member Manohar “Mike” Arora, P.E., M.S., built his multidisciplinary firm Arora Engineers Inc. from below ground up.

Today, Arora Engineers Inc., headquartered in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, has 90 employees and eight offices in six states, including its subsidiary Arora Systems Group. Its engineering services include electrical, mechanical, electrical aeronautical, fire, and special systems, as well as nonengineering services such as construction management and GIS.

The firm’s recent projects include MEP modeling at Boston’s Logan International Airport; electrical design work for the redecking of the Walt Whitman Bridge, which connects Philadelphia and Gloucester City, New Jersey; and GIS services at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina.

Arora Engineers has also been recognized numerous times by the Philadelphia Business Journal as one of the region’s top engineering firms, top family-owned businesses, and top minority-owned businesses and is consistently ranked among the fastest growing private companies in the US by Inc. magazine. But the firm got its start with Mike in 1986 in the basement of his Pennsylvania home.

“I stayed there about three months and then my wife said, ‘No, no, no… now you have to move out,’” Mike laughs. “Then we entered a [600-square-foot] space in Media, Pennsylvania.”

His wife Adarsh Arora’s desire to move the firm out of their basement should not be taken to mean Arora suffered from lack of familial support. In fact, the opposite is true. The firm remains a family-owned business, and Mike’s family has always been and continues to be a major part of the firm.

Adarsh left teaching in 1989 to help with the business, and their son, Manik Arora, P.E., joined the firm in 1992. In 2006, Mike made Manik president and CEO, taking for himself a position as chairman of the board. “Manik has more energy,” Mike says. “He has been with me for 22 years and he’s doing a great job.”

In addition to the support and hard work of his family, Mike credits confidence and the ability to take risks with the success of his firm. Before starting Arora Engineers Inc., he remembers being told he was making a mistake each time he left a good engineering position.

“Any place I worked before I started the business, everybody told me you are making a mistake leaving this job,” he says. “Every time I said, ‘look, I’m taking my chances,’ and I’m glad I did.”

Before opening Arora Engineers, Mike not only had the opportunity to work for a variety of companies and consulting engineering firms, but eventually he was able to work abroad for the Army Corps of Engineers.

“I believed in myself,” he says. “I was very confident I could make it go.”

To this day, confidence and taking risks continue to play a major part in Arora Engineers’ success. “When Manik came to this office … he had some ideas and he was energetic and he brought some new guys,” Mike says. “I was a little bit careful on spending some money, but then I agreed with him that you have to sometimes take bigger risks. I was a risk taker, but not as big a risk taker as my son.”

Starting his own firm didn’t always go smoothly, but the important thing, Mike says, is that he learned from his mistakes and remained true to his principles, his own formula for success.

“Everybody has a formula for success and I have my own,” he says. “I believe love what you do, take risks, work hard, and give back. Everybody, like I said, has their own formula, but this works for me, and I’ve had a very rewarding career.”

A PASSENGER AT BOSTON’S LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT VIEWS OPTIONS FOR GROUND TRANSPORTATION FROM THE AIRPORT. ARORA ENGINEERS DESIGNED MOST OF THE DIGITAL SIGNS IN USE AT LOGAN.