Cultural Resources

When projects have the potential to affect historic properties or cultural resources, specialized experience and knowledge is critical. Through it all, our specialized teams help keep your project moving.

Our cultural resources specialists bring their know-how and attention to detail to all phases of work in cultural resources — from selecting sites that avoid historic properties to obtaining historic preservation construction clearances and developing measures to mitigate your project’s effects. Our research and fieldwork help you comply with federal and state requirements.

We have project experience spanning a variety of project types, including new highways, rail, bridges, transmission lines, pipelines, renewable energy and industrial facilities. These projects often require surveying and siting in hard-to-reach areas and potentially crossing historically significant landscapes, archaeological sites, traditional cultural places and architectural resources. These locations, known collectively as cultural resources, are important to protect — but they don’t have to get in the way of your project and your schedule.

Our archaeologists, architectural historians, geomorphologists, and other academically and professionally trained staff help select sites and routes that avoid cultural resources while keeping your overall costs low. We understand the federal and state permitting processes and can assist you in obtaining cultural resource clearances. We can also assist you in developing measures to mitigate your project’s effects on unavoidable sites.

Among our services:

  • Cultural resource surveys: Gathering information to determine the optimal path forward for your project, documenting and evaluating the affected cultural resources with an eye on local, state and national history.
  • Geoarchaeological assessments: In some portions of the landscape, resources can be deeply buried. We assess the potential for buried resources and employ a combination of mechanical and manual tools during cultural resource surveys. We also can provide such services to other cultural resources companies without this capability.
  • Architectural surveys and assessments: We offer archival research, historical analysis, and documentation and assessment services of the built environment. These services assist your project comply with local, state and federal regulations, including compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act.
  • Evaluation and mitigation: Determining if cultural resources identified within your project area meet criteria for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility, using a range of techniques from low-tech excavations to 3D scanning and ground-penetrating radar.
  • Archaeological laboratory: We have a 2,094-square-foot, fully equipped, dedicated archaeological lab in Kansas City, Missouri. The lab is staffed with experienced archaeological professionals who wash, sort, catalog, analyze, photograph and report on prehistoric and historic-age artifacts. The lab has climate-controlled storage and a secured artifact storage space but is not a curation facility and does not house permanent collections. The lab is capable of and is experienced in preparing collections for curation at an approved facility.
  • Tribal engagement: Our team has been successfully conducting cooperative cultural resources investigations with staff from multiple Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs) across the Great Plains. We can also act as tribal engagement lead for your projects, which involves taking the lead on field coordination with tribal monitors and managing the employment and coordination of additional tribal workers.

We do extensive research into the background of your project to identify red flags early in the planning stages, leaving multiple avoidance options open during the planning process. Through the use of state and federal databases, historic maps and historic aerial photographs, historic documents, soils surveys, LIDAR survey data, and other sources, we help you plan a project that will have a minimal impact on surrounding cultural resources. Above all else, we keep your project headed in the right direction.

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Andrew Gottsfield
Andrew Gottsfield
Section Manager
+1 (816) 349-6718
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