Croy, a full-service engineering and consulting firm, celebrated the opening of new Chattanooga office this week with a ribbon-cutting to mark the expansion into the Tennessee market.
“It’s an exciting time for Croy to expand in this city – a place I’ve been fortunate to call home for the past 15 years,” said Russell Morehead, a vice president who heads the local office.
Croy’s Chattanooga office is located at 1270 Market Street in the city’s Southside Historic District. The 150-person firm also operates offices in Huntsville, Ala., Cartersville, Ga., Marietta, Ga., and Smyrna, Ga. Croy provides a range of civil engineering, surveying, landscape architecture, land acquisition, and planning services to municipal and private clients across the Southeast.
German fan maker builds in Tennessee
A German fan maker plans to build a new $37 million manufacturing plant in Northeast Tennessee and hire 200 workers over time.
Ebm-papst, the world’s biggest electric fan motor manufacturer based in Mulfingen, Germany, announced Thursday it will begin making fans for refrigeration, air conditioning and ventilation applications in the Washington County Industrial Park. The new facility is set to begin production by September and will be the fourth foreign-based manufacturer to locate in the industrial park, which was supported with both state and TVA grants.
Ebm-papst has an international reach with more than 15,000 employees worldwide. The company’s U.S. headquarters is located in Connecticut, where it employs approximately 300 people.
Over the past decade, more than two dozen German-based companies have located in Southeast Tennessee, investing more than $5 billion at the Volkswagen assembly plant in Chattanooga, the Wacker Chemie p0lysilicon plant in Charleston and many other auto and chemical suppliers to those firms. Tennessee is home to more than 120 German-owned establishments that collectively employ nearly 20,000 employees.
Watchdog wants EPA head to repay travel money
The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog urged the agency on Thursday to look into recovering $124,000 in premium travel charges for former EPA head Scott Pruitt and his bodyguards. The EPA’s inspector general rejected Pruitt’s claims that security concerns warranted the first- and business-class travel at taxpayer expense.
The findings provided a rare public resolution to one in a long series of ethics allegations that led to Pruitt’s resignation last July. The EPA inspector general had ended some previous investigations, including one of his $50-a-night condo deal with the spouse of a lobbyist, without making a ruling, saying Pruitt’s resignation had made it impossible for investigators to interview him.
The travel questioned by the watchdog office included $16,000 in premium-class travel to Morocco and 16 trips that were either directly to or stopping in Pruitt’s hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Boeing finishes Max improvements
Boeing says it has finished with its updates to the flight-control software implicated in two deadly crashes involving its 737 Max, moving a step closer to getting the plane back in the sky.
Aviation regulators still have more questions about how pilots interact with the plane’s controls under different circumstances, and Boeing says it is providing that information.
The Federal Aviation Administration, foreign regulators and airlines are reviewing Boeing’s plans for additional pilot training, the company said Thursday.
The next major step is a certification flight with FAA representatives. That flight has not yet been scheduled.