Talk:CDM Smith

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Learmonth.p. Peer reviewers: Ryanleys, Heytherefriend.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:26, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Review

Looking good! Next steps could include an:

• categories
• maybe a photo (offices in Cambridge?)
• make sure it's not a Wikipedia:Orphan. -Reagle (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

CDM Smith Review

Hi! Fantastic job on your Wiki article! Here are a few of the edits that I made...

· Inserted outside link to...

– Engineering News-Record's 2015 Top 500 Design Firms list

– Engineering News-Record's 2015 Top Environmental Firms list

· Added "Three years later..." to the History section of CDM Smith

It now states, "Three years later, CDM Smith acquired the Ohio-based Louis Perry Group..."

· Added an in-source Wiki link to the Subsidiary Wiki page

- Heytherefriend (talk) 18:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Peer review

Good article! I fixed added a wikilink of you, and fixed it on the 75 State Street page as well, and added some categories.

Any information about big projects they worked on could make this stronger! Ryanleys (talk) 15:50, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Suggested updates for accuracy - July 2017

Hello. My name is Daryl Shepard and I am the principal communications specialist at CDM Smith. I am responsible for maintaining our digital brand presence, including our corporate website and social media. I wish to thank those that create our corporate page and have provided updates!

I would like to recommend some changes to our corporate wikipedia page for clarity and accuracy. Please let me know who can help me, how this might be done or if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks!

• Please remove revenue from the right rail as we are a privately held firm that doesn’t release financial information.

• Please update the history section with the following:

Since its founding in 1947, CDM Smith has been a leading consulting firm in the field of water and wastewater. Over the years, the firm has expanded its offerings to become a full-service engineering and construction firm. Today, the company boasts 5,000-plus employees in more than 125 offices worldwide.

For 70 years, the company has provided innovative and sustainable solutions combined with responsive, professional service to its clients. Worldwide, CDM Smith delivers a full range of services and integrated approaches that satisfy client needs for progressive and adaptive master planning, asset management, condition assessment and rehabilitation, hydraulic evaluations, design, consulting, program management and construction management to deliver new conveyance systems or upgrade existing ones.

In September 1944, after serving for 15 years as the professor in charge of Sanitary Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Thomas R. Camp elected to devote his energy to private engineering practice. Less than three years later, in January 1947, Camp joined forces with Herman G. Dresser and Jack E. McKee to form Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM). Fast forward to 2012, Wilbur Smith Associates merged with CDM to form CDM Smith Inc. The merger enhanced the company’s global capability in transportation engineering. The growth would have been unimaginable in the early days of the company in 1947 when it had a staff of seven at its Boston office.

Another hallmark of the company has been its research and development (R&D) program that feeds its delivery of technical excellence, drives innovation, and helps develop the next generation of thought leaders, ensuring continued industry leadership in delivering cutting-edge solutions for its clients. The company has leveraged its R&D investments to nurture strategic partnerships with clients and research institutions, and to participate in tailored collaborations. (reference:

• For clarity and accuracy, please replace last paragraph with the following:

In June 2017, CDM Smith reached agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the World Bank Group (WBG) for self-reported improper business activities conducted by a few individuals in the firm’s India and Vietnam operations. The company self-discovered and self-reported potential infractions to DOJ and the World Bank, and DOJ declined to prosecute CDM Smith for corruption. Following an investigation into the disclosed business practices, CDM Smith agreed to disgorge $4.03 million and DOJ has declined to take further action against CDM Smith.

• Update intro paragraph with new rankings:

24 – 2017 ENR Top 500 Design Firms

12 – 2016 ENR Top 200 Environmental Firms

Shepardde (talk) 14:49, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Daryl, and thank you for your suggestions, and for following Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines by placing an edit request instead of modifying the article directly. I decline to implement your draft at this time. Unfortunately, your proposed text is too promotional and does not adhere to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising, marketing or public relations, but the purpose of your proposed text is clearly to win over prospective customers and investors. As such, it cannot be added to the article unless it is substantially rewritten. The most obvious red flags are phrases that are frequently used in press releases, but are not appropriate for an encyclopedia. These promotional terms include phrases such as "leading," "cutting-edge solutions," and "innovative and sustainable." Just as importantly, watch out for sentences that sound vaguely positive, but don't actually tell the reader anything specific. The draft must be rewritten so it doesn't have noticeable slant in favor of the company.

As for the paragraph on the DOJ investigation paragraph, the current article version could be a bit more balanced in presenting your firm's conduct, but your version puts far too much of positive spin on the DOJ investigation. I agree that the self-disclosure should be mentioned, but omitting the benefits CDM Smith gained under the FCPA Pilot Program for the self disclosure masks vital context necessary for this article's readers. I don't see a reason for omitting the World Bank sanction either. Once you have made revisions, please feel free to resubmit your draft by placing another edit request. Best, Altamel (talk) 21:57, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

References

Vandalism

Recently a number of unsupported statements added; should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anonymoustea (talk • contribs) 01:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

As representatives of CDM Smith, we request the following edits (deletions and additions) to the discussion on our Wikipedia page regarding investigative activities in India and Vietnam.

The reasons for requesting these changes are as follows:

1. The series of text additions entered anonymously from an India IP address on August 16, 2017 is exaggerated, sensationalized, and uses specific language that is not impartial or in the spirit of the “encyclopedia” style and unbiased protocol of Wikipedia. In addition, the series of text additions are not cited to any public documents and do not contain facts, but instead reflect the opinion of the writer. Words and statements such as “for some unknown and mysterious reasons,” “the U.S. Department of Justice, who took all the credit in this case,” “the officers who went slow in the case or who tried to botch-up the investigation,” and “People involved in the case are speaking up and coming forward with the existing facts, which were hitherto unknown in public domain,” are among several additions that are editorialized and are improper use of the Wikipedia format.
2. Some of the information posted is highly confidential and is not be available in any citable public document.
3. Some information is not factually accurate. For instance, CDM Smith was NOT “conditionally de-barred” but rather “conditionally non-debarred.”

Because of the sensitive and confidentially nature of these activities, we ask that the noted information be deleted and replaced as quickly as possible with the following, as reported directly (and cited) from the Department of Justice and the World Bank.

Please consider the following edits:

• Remove the second paragraph in the introduction starting with "Recently the company was in the news ..." and ending with justice.gov hyperlink. This information is not germane to the factual introduction of the firm. History of this investigation is covered later on the page.
• In first paragraph of history section, remove sentence starting, "In India, CDM Smith has offices in Bangalore ..." Calling out two office specifically and not many of CDM Smith's other offices has no relation to the history of the firm.
• Remove paragraph two (beginning "On 09th July 2015"), paragraph three (beginning "Enquiries have been ordered against"), and paragraph four (beginning "Investigations by the Fraud section") in the History section.
• Keep final two paragraphs in History section (beginning "On July 15, 2017" and "On August 3, 2017").

Consider adding the following paragraphs before the ones beginning "On July 15, 2017" and "On August 3, 2017"

In June 2017, CDM Smith reached agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the World Bank Group (WBG) for self-reported improper business activities conducted in the firm’s India and Vietnam operations. The investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Fraud Section (the “Department”) found that from 2011 to 2015, CDM Smith paid approximately $1.18 million in bribes to government officials in India in exchange for highway construction supervision and design contracts and a water project contract resulting in approximately $4 million in net profits. In addition, CDM Smith’s division responsible for India and CDM India paid $25,000 to local officials in the Indian state of Goa in relation to a water project contract.

CDM Smith Inc. and its affiliates were conditionally non-debarred by the World Bank Group for 1.5 years. When executing a consulting contract financed by the Da Nang Priority Infrastructure Investment Project in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, CDM Smith failed to disclose a sub-consulting agreement with a local Vietnamese company, and did not seek a contractually-required written approval of the agreement from the project implementing agency. CDM Smith subsequently disclosed this misconduct to the Bank. Under the terms of its settlement, CDM Smith is required to adopt a Corporate Compliance Program consistent with the World Bank Group Integrity Compliance Guidelines, and fully cooperate with the Bank in advancing its anticorruption work.

Shepardde (talk) 14:56, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Shepardde (talk) 12:45, 21 August 2017 (UTC) Shepardde (talk) 18:17, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The page current as Sep 26 2017 is a complete mess filled with minutiae regarding investigations into business practices in India. I am not sure if this has been followed up on via the Edit Request suggestion made to the CDM Smith PR employee above, but I personally think that the version dated July 30, 2017 is a much clearer article with all of the pertinent information (e.g. a brief description of the fraud/bribery investigation and conclusions, without (poorly written) deep dive into the minutiae that is currently posted. I am posting this on the talk page to see if anyone is following this discussion, but barring any objections, I propose to roll-back the edits to the 7/30/2017 version. I haven't read the CDMSmith employee's requests in detail, so I do not know how much this overlaps with what they are requesting, but I came to this conclusion not from this Talk page, but by digging through the article history to see if I could suss out where the extraneous (IMO) text first appeared, and it is from Aug 15, 2017. Furthermore one of the requests I did see corresponded to the revenue published in the info box. While there is a citation for this revenue figure, the source is non-existent and listed simply as 'Gale' with a broken URL. Seems dubious. Edw128 (talk) 21:36, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Smartbot2017 (talk) 18:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)Link may be repaired, it is encyclopaedia not advertising portal, the concerns of the CDM Smith has already been considered where it was genuine Smartbot2017

I concur with Edw128; the recent additions from IPs and later by Smartbot2017 are terrible and the article was a complete mess. A brief and neutral summary of the outcomes suffices. We don't need a play-by-play with minute details of every action, and we certainly do not need personal commentary and colorful language. I've reverted the material back to 8/10/2017 which seemed to be the last stable version. I'm not in the habit of acting on requests from COI editors, but I'll look at the suggestions above when I get some free time. Kuru (talk) 21:35, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Update main intro

Please update the second sentence in the intro to reflect 2018 and 2019 data:

The employee-owned company is currently ranked 23nd on Engineering News-Record's 2019 Top 500 Design Firms list and 16th on their 2018 Top 200 Environmental Firms list.

https://www.enr.com/toplists/2019-Top-500-Design-Firms1 https://www.enr.com/toplists/2018-Top-200-Environmental-Firms-1 Shepardde (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2019 (UTC)