Harbor Environmental & Safety

Harbor Environmental & Safety of Little Rock, founded in 2007, provides engineering, compliance and digital services to clients in Arkansas and across the country as well as the globe.

Those clients include homeowners, municipalities, manufacturers and more, and even international clients in places like Ireland, Mexico and Canada. Harbor has about 30 employees.

“The interesting thing about Harbor is that we are one of those companies that can take a new business or take a business from the point where they’re an idea in a boardroom” on as a client, said Leslie Davis, who was recently named president and CEO of the woman-owned firm and is one of its founders. “I think folks look at Harbor as a small Arkansas-based engineering and environmental firm, and really, we’re so, so much more than that. Our experience is really well outside the bounds of a typical engineering company here.”

For example, the biggest piece of the firm’s business, and the piece that is growing the most, is its environmental health and safety software and sustainability software, she said. That piece is growing because Harbor’s business clients are being asked by their clients to document their carbon footprint.

“We live in a time right now where consumers are exceedingly making their choices based on the environmental footprint and the social and economic activities of the companies they’re shopping from,” Davis said. “We do a lot of work for U.S. dairy, and telling their environmental and social story is so important to them — not only from an ‘it’s the right thing to do’ perspective, but also from ‘the consumers are requiring it. Shareholders are requiring it’ [perspective].”

Recently, clients have needed even more from Harbor: software to help them comply with COVID-related regulations. Harbor also has opportunities to help clients with new federally funded infrastructure projects, such as updates to water and wastewater systems built decades ago.