EwingCole to merge with healthcare specialist Robert D. Lynn Associates

EwingCole, a nationally recognized architectural, engineering, interior design, and planning firm with more than 320 professionals, today announced that it will combine its practice with Robert D. Lynn Associates of Philadelphia, a 40-person firm with a robust portfolio of healthcare projects. The combination, which the firms expect to take effect by September 1, 2009, will create the Delaware Valley's largest and most comprehensive firm with an emphasis on healthcare architecture, and a national scope and presence.

The combined firm will offer healthcare organizations 90 years of collective institutional experience in delivering projects that meet its clients' needs and vision, while helping them to live within financial realities. The combination of EwingCole and RDLA will be able to achieve a broader market penetration nationally, while expanding its regional leadership. There are also advantages from a practice perspective: combining EwingCole and RDLA will provide added expertise and depth of resources to deliver an unparalleled level of services in a rapidly changing industry.

"Our combination represents a significant opportunity; each firm has core capabilities that enhance the other's," said John Gerbner, EwingCole¹s President and Chief Operating Officer. "By joining our talents, the result will be a team that will deliver greater expertise and depth than either firm presently delivers on its own.  This will be good for EwingCole, RDLA and our current and future clients," he added.

Together, EwingCole and RDLA possess a client roster that reads like a virtual "Who's Who" of top healthcare organizations around the nation. From the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Sutter Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Geisinger Health System, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Cooper University Hospital, Bayhealth Medical Center, City of Hope Medical Center to the Children¹s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), University of Maryland Medical Center, Main Line Health, Hershey Medical Center, Abington Memorial Health System, Conemaugh Health System and St. Joseph Hospital of Bellingham, Washington, the firms have built a solid track record, blending multiple geographic locations and disciplines and providing diverse perspectives, while working in the best interest of their clients.

"As part of the combination, we¹ll merge our staffs, bringing together multiple teams of expert designers and architects," said Robert Lynn, RDLA's Chief Executive Officer. "We¹ll also remain focused on our common approach to client service: we are proud of the solid relationships we¹ve maintained with our clients, with many lasting a generation or more. That approach to project development, perhaps more than anything else, is a hallmark of the way both of our firms have provided services to our clients from the start."

Gerbner and Lynn noted that RDLA's principals have agreed to join the combined firm, ensuring continuity of talent. They also said that the two firms have a significant pipeline of project work that will fuel future growth.

The two firms will combine their Philadelphia offices into EwingCole's facility, which overlooks historic Independence Mall.