Pasadena-based consulting and technical services company Tetra Tech Inc. announced March 3 that it has acquired Vancouver, British Columbia-based water management company Piteau Associates.

Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
Piteau Associates was founded in 1976 by a group of geotechnical engineers led by Douglas Piteau to service the mining and other extraction industries. The next year, the firm expanded into hydrology management to support its mining work; that part of the practice eventually grew to encompass groundwater management and other sustainable practices.

Piteau has grown over the years to 140 employees in 11 offices in seven countries, mostly in the Americas. It now specializes in sustainable natural resource analytics including hydrologic numerical modeling and dewatering system design. Among the company’s pioneering techniques: numerical models to simulate rock mass behavior for slope design.

Tetra Tech was founded a decade earlier in Pasadena in 1966 as a water management company with a similar initial focus: providing engineering services related to waterways, harbors and coastal areas. But Tetra Tech has grown into a much more sizable company through organic growth and dozens of strategic acquisitions; it now employs about 21,000 in 450 offices worldwide and posted 2021 revenue of $3.2 billion. In recent years, Tetra Tech has moved into technology and data management services, especially for its single biggest customer: the U.S. government.

Also in March, Tetra Tech acquired Axiom Data Science, an Anchorage, Alaska-based climate data analysis company; terms for that deal were also not disclosed.
As for the Piteau Associates acquisition, Tetra Tech said in the announcement that Piteau will join its commercial and international services group, enhancing its ability to provide water management analysis.

“Tetra Tech has a long history of (applying) advanced analytics to water management,” Dan Batrack, Tetra Tech’s chief executive, said in the announcement. “The addition of Piteau Associates further expands our expertise in the specialized analysis of sustainable water management and geotechnics for our commercial resource management clients.”