Rick Himmel, Principal, is a professional mechanical engineer with over 40 years of experience. He has served as Lead Mechanical Engineer on projects including high-rise office buildings, data centers, hospitals, universities, and high-tech laboratories and clean rooms. Rick’s extensive design/build expertise means he sees buildings as a whole, intuitively understanding how to work with other disciplines to create designs that improve the entire system as it will be used by its occupants. He combines sensitivity to cost with innovative solutions as he chooses systems and materials and lays out designs for his clients.
Rick’s path to an engineering career began early on. He recalls growing up hearing his father, a journeyman electrician, talk about how engineers didn’t know anything about electrical systems. He got his degree in mechanical engineering in part to prove to his father that there was at least one engineer in the world who got it. It’s easy to see that his design-build background evolved very naturally. The focus on NASA’s Space Shuttle program during his college years also played a role in his career choice, inspiring him to want to build things and use technology.
Early in his career, he had an opportunity to work on ventilation for a 1.5M sf underground parking structure on the Microsoft Campus. At the time, it was the largest structure of its kind in the western half of the United States, and one of the largest cooling plants. He led a team of 10 engineers to design this project that remains one of Microsoft’s most efficient buildings to date.