Susan VanBenschoten, IMEG Director of Urban Design, Planning, and Engagement, joins host Joe Payne to discuss the expansive services and expertise of her team.

With 40 years of experience in the community planning and civil infrastructure industry, Susan previously was CEO of FHI Studio, a large planning firm in the Northeast that joined IMEG in 2024, bringing a new service line to the firm. She frames urban planning as the critical foundation upon which successful infrastructure and community outcomes are built. This early-stage focus, she says, defines what a project is before it advances into design, policy, or implementation.

“Urban design and planning is really an umbrella of dozens of different services that are integrated during the planning process,” she explains. These services reside in five major groups: transportation planning, engineering, and design; community planning, land planning, and urban design; environmental planning, resiliency planning, and permitting; landscape architecture; and community engagement—which is, Susan adds, “part and parcel to all the rest of the planning that we do.”

These services are used in various combinations, based on the needs of a project, and operate as an interconnected system. “Planning is very broad and by its nature needs to be multidisciplinary,” Susan says, emphasizing the importance of aligning technical, environmental, and social considerations from the outset. Central to this process is problem definition—often more complex than it initially appears. “You’re really backing up to the very beginning of a problem,” Susan says. Whether addressing congestion, land use, or economic challenges, her team relies on data analysis paired with direct community input. “We really try to use data-driven analysis to understand what the problem really is but also listen to the community so we understand what they see the problem is.”

While traditional public meetings and outreach continue to be conducted, technology has expanded the reach and effectiveness of community engagement. “We still hold meetings. We still do walkabouts—walking through communities and seeing firsthand what some of the issues are.” Technology, however, has created ways to involve more of the community with virtual meetings, online surveys, and virtual reality, which allows “people to visualize what we are talking about.”

Depending on the project, this process can result in a comprehensive “roadmap,” particularly in large-scale or area-wide planning efforts. Such a roadmap can include dozens of recommendations, ranging from immediate actions to long-term capital investments. Importantly, such plans are not static documents. “Planning documents are living documents,” Susan says, evolving alongside the communities they serve.

Susan and her team are eager to expand their work across the U.S., collaborating with IMEG’s civil infrastructure and MEP teams to bring more value and successful outcomes to clients. “That's the power of having planning and engineering and design all under one roof,” she says. “It's very much in line with IMEG's purpose of shaping and making better communities.”

Learn more about IMEG’s Urban Design, Planning, & Engagement services.

This episode is a conversation with Juan Moreno, an electrical designer at IMEG and a past recipient of the firm’s engineering scholarship program. Juan received one of the thirty $10,000 scholarships awarded when the program was launched in 2023.

Born in Miami, Juan spent his childhood and teen years in Colombia. In 2021 he enrolled at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where one of his older sisters, a UNF graduate, was living at the time. Engineering, he explains, was always a likely path as the profession runs in his family.

“My dad is a civil engineer and one of my sisters is also a civil engineer. So I always knew I was going to go the engineering route,” he says. His interest in electrical engineering took root after taking an electrician course while still in Colombia. “It really got me into the electrical side of engineering,” Juan says, adding that electrical courses at UNF sealed the deal. “Every lab in college, it was super fun, because it was hands-on.”

Juan learned about the IMEG Scholarship Program in 2022 from a friend who was working as an intern at IMEG’s Jacksonville office. Juan soon applied, saying the process was “pretty straightforward and simple”—though he had little expectation he would be chosen as one of the recipients. The following summer, while back home with his family in Colombia, Juan and his parents learned he had won one of the scholarships. “It was quite the surprise,” he says. “We were all pretty happy.”

While there are no strings or promises of employment attached to the IMEG scholarship, after Juan graduated in May of 2025 with a degree in electrical engineering he decided to apply to the firm. He was hired and now works out of IMEG’s office in Broomall, PA, southwest of Philadelphia. A few months later he attended the firm’s Consultancy 101 program—a week-long gathering of newly hired graduates from across the country to introduce them to the firm, its services and markets, technology and innovation initiatives, and to get to know each other and have some fun. After that it was back to the Broomall office, where he has been learning from veteran engineers while working with them on various projects, including a large hotel and casino project in New York.

“Every day I get to learn a lot,” Juan says. “I try to connect it with stuff from college, but of course, college is really theoretical and just academic.”

“Every day I’m learning something new,” he adds. “I think that’s great.”

To date, the IMEG Scholarship Program has awarded 93 scholarships worth $10,000 each to underserved college students studying engineering. Scholarship applications for the 2026-27 academic year are being accepted through March 13. To learn more and apply, visit the IMEG website Careers section.

Considering using mass timber for the first time? IMEG’s Robert Norton provides key considerations in this episode of The Future Built Smarter. A senior structural engineer working out of IMEG’s San Francisco office, Robert has more than a decade of experience designing with mass timber. He says the material is more than a trend—it transforms how a building is experienced. “Being in a wood building makes you much more comfortable. The wood provides a lot of warmth and it feels homier.”

Mass timber also changes how a building is designed and constructed, he adds. “It becomes part of the architecture.” Unlike steel or concrete buildings, where beams are often hidden behind ceilings, mass timber showcases every structural component. “Everything you do as an engineer is on display. All the connections, all the columns, the beams, the floor systems—they’re visible for people to either enjoy or not enjoy, depending on how well of a job you do.” This emphasis on exposure means early collaboration is critical. “We really want to be as integrated as possible with the architect and engineers, so when we do get drawings from the fabricator for the mass timber panels, it's definitely ready to be installed.” Robert’s team has also developed specialized connections. “Most of those off-the-shelf connections don’t work, so we’ve done a handful of specialized details that create that really seamless look in the building.”

Thanks to its prefabricated panels, mass timber also speeds up construction,. “The mass timber product is assembled in pieces that come to the site and are dropped in place. You’re saving up to 30 percent off your schedule just in the floor system alone.” The material also is highly sustainable, having much less embodied carbon than steel or concrete, he adds. And contrary to widely-held misconceptions, mass timber is fire-retardant. Unlike typical framing lumber, Robert says, “mass timber chars on the outside, forming a protective layer that insulates the core. That allows us to meet one-hour, two-hour, and even higher fire ratings—often without additional fireproofing.”

While upfront costs can be higher with mass timber, early planning can help overcome that, Robert says. “If you have designed for steel or concrete and then ask the team to ‘convert it to mass timber,’ you will almost certainly see a 25 percent to 30 percent cost premium. That’s the wrong way to approach it. To make mass timber competitive, it needs to be part of the project from day one. Doing that, you’re going to find the mass timber prices really drop dramatically.”