Dr. H. Kit Miyamoto, Global CEO of Miyamoto International, built a five-person engineering practice into a worldwide engineering firm that has 30 locations on four continents with one humanitarian purpose: to make the world a better, safer place from a local, five-person engineering practice. Miyamoto International is known for its innovative engineering and disaster response and reconstruction. Its purpose-driven mission and strength-focused culture drive the company’s growth and attract equally passionate and teamwork-focused team members.
Dr. Miyamoto holds graduate degrees from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and California State University, where he has been recognized as a Distinguished Alumni. He has been a California Seismic Safety Commissioner for the past 12 years. He has won the Engineering News Record’s “Global Best Project” award an unprecedented five consecutive times. Major media, such as CNN, CBS, ABC, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Rolling Stone, have profiled him. He is featured in the “Designing for Disaster” exhibit at the National Building Museum.
You are well known for your post-disaster investigation and recovery efforts. But before we discuss that subject, would you tell our readers a little about your life and engineering career before the formation of Miyamoto International?
I was born and grew up in Japan. When I turned 18, I left for the United States… to play for the Dallas Cowboys. Well, as you can see, that plan didn’t quite work out. I played college football for a couple of years, but then blew out my knee. Plan B was to be a structural engineer! That worked out okay. I attended California State University Chico (Chico State as it is often called) and received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. It took me eight years since I was too busy playing football, being a fraternity brother, a resident advisor, a forest firefighter, a gold miner, and all those other opportunities that college gives you.
So then you started your engineering career. How did that turn out?
Yes, I joined a local Sacramento structural engineering company called Marr Shaffer. It was a small, half-dozen-person company but well respected. The firm had been around since 1947. When I arrived, they specialized in engineering school and small commercial projects like most small firms. Honestly, I was an underperforming young engineer. I remember that John Shaffer wanted to fire me during my first year. But I talked him out of it. It was a good thing for both of us.
How is that?
I got better, and eventually, I bought him out. It was my first acquisition. It was not cheap, but I was able to pay him out over several years. I am glad I could do that and pay back my first mentor, John. Nothing stopped him. Nothing was impossible for him. This attitude carries on today at Miyamoto.
What about the early days at Miyamoto?
After I took over Marr Shaffer in 1997, we grew quickly in Sacramento. We did a lot of interesting things. We used viscous dampers and performed performance-based engineering. It is common now, but it was unheard of then as applying to day-to-day practice. I knocked on the doors of many famous professors like Popov, Whittaker, Hanson, and Shole to learn from them. Roger Shole was truly my mentor for displacement-based engineering. He always encouraged me. I can still hear his voice saying that I was a shoulder above many others. I don’t know if that was true or not, but I believed it. So, Miyamoto established very distinct technical foundations. Wherever we go, there are structures with dampers, from Kathmandu, Haiti, Istanbul, to Delhi.
You obviously wanted to do more than run a local engineering practice. Would you tell us about that?
We opened offices in Los Angeles and Orange County in the early 2000s. We changed our name to Miyamoto International. Some thought I went crazy since we didn’t have any “international” anything then, not even a single project. But it was my aspiration. Around this time, Mark Zweig joined our board. He was the CEO of Zweig White, the AEC business consultant of the world. He taught us the foundations of entrepreneurship. His thoughts and philosophy of business live well here today.
Then I met Peter Yanev at an EERI meeting, fresh out of EQE. Peter founded EQE, served as CEO, and led it through tremendous growth. He grew a two-person firm to a 700-person firm globally. To me, he was a towering figure. I wanted to be just like that. When I met him, I asked if he could join us as a board member. I don’t know why he said yes, but this was a pivotal moment for us to be international.
What did you learn from Peter?
Again, he was not cheap, but I learned a lot from his genius. One week, he asked me to go to Washington, DC, to meet all of his World Bank contacts. We leveraged all of the contacts I met that week. Soon after, we won our first international project in Romania; a World Bank-financed earthquake disaster risk reduction program. It was in 2005. Peter always pushed me to go and meet these foreign clients. I had no experience and no idea what I should be doing, but it all worked out. Our performance-based engineering background really helped us to understand these countries’ engineering issues and codes. In 2008, we worked on the Istanbul 2000 School Retrofit Project. This project became very famous in the circle of international development influence.
He also pushed me to personally go on reconnaissance trips whenever and wherever earthquakes happened. The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was a change maker. There was a Chinese government ban on foreign engineers visiting the area, but we purchased tourist visa to Beijing and went there anyway. We saw thousands of kids killed in the collapsed schools. At that time, the Chinese used unreinforced masonry piers to support concrete precast slabs. Essentially a death trap. We quickly published a technical bulletin showing the failure mechanism. Someone translated it into Mandarin, and it was on the internet everywhere. After that, I understand that the government implemented seismic strengthening programs throughout the country. I am not saying that we influenced its decision, but at least our information came out quickly and widely.
It is a leap from traveling to see earthquake damage to becoming an internationally recognized expert in earthquake risk reduction. What happened next?
I met Professor Wada from the Tokyo Institute of Technology on this recon trip. He was one of the most celebrated earthquake structural engineers in Japan. Even today, he is. I asked him to take me as a Ph.D. student. Why not? He is the best. I may have been one of the first remote learning students in the world. I was very interested in probabilistic risk analysis. I was really influenced by what EQE was doing with all their fancy analyses for the insurance industry. So for the next four years, I diligently worked on ‘Probabilistic Risk Identification of Steel Structures with Viscous Dampers.’ It essentially created a database of collapse by simulation of damped structures with OPENSEAS. Dr. Amir Gilani in my office taught me a lot. Professor Kasai was on my thesis judging committee, and he was a tough one. I had to add an additional chapter just for him.
So, you can see a common theme in this story. Meet the best and ask them to be your teacher. Today, I have mentors. One is Jaimie Clare Curtis. Jaimie sits on our board, and she is much younger than I am. She was an executive manager of Zweig Group and now with Private Equity. Her business insight is so critical to us. It is nothing to do with age. One needs to learn from the smartest in the business.
Was there a seminal event that really triggered the “international” aspect of Miyamoto International?
In 2010, a great earthquake happened in Haiti. This 7.0M earthquake near Port au Prince’s capital killed more than 300,000 people. We were soon contacted by the World Bank and other international entities for whom we had worked since the fateful one-week DC trip. From all the things we have done and learned in the past, we were able to connect the dots in absolute chaos. It seemed that no one knew what needed to be done or how or when. We connected UN agencies, the US military, the World Bank, the Haitian government, and Haitian engineers to do damage assessment and the start of repairs to broken houses by building capacity in Haitian engineers and masons. We assessed roughly 420,000 structures, and in the end, more than 15,000 structures were repaired or reconstructed, often in extremely difficult conditions. It was the middle of a deep recession in California, so everyone in California’s offices had spare engineers that went to Haiti.
We learned a lot from Haiti, and Haiti really put us in the spotlight of the UN, World Bank, and the US government. They had never seen anything like us.
We have discussed the traditional structural engineering part of the business that you bought and grew. How much greater is the sum of the parts than 1 + 1 = 2? How do the two sides of the business support each other?
Our company is organized around these two expert areas, engineering and international development/humanitarian assistance.
In the US, we provide structural and mechanical, and electrical engineering. We have offices in all large California and Nevada cities; Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Pleasanton, Ontario, San Diego, Reno, and Las Vegas, plus Los Angeles and Orange County, as I mentioned earlier. We are also in DC and Puerto Rico. We do great engineering there, from the Google Headquarters to the Hollywood Bowl to Amazon distribution centers.
The International Development/Humanitarian Assistance work is not only highly technical. But, also involves many more moving parts, such as politics, culture, language, and legal than our US work. Unfortunately, only a few engineering firms are involved. This always bothers me. Even the great EQE really didn’t get into humanitarian work that much.
The structural engineers work alongside the International Development/Humanitarian Assistance staff as one unified team, not as separate profit centers as some do. Both expertise work together well. US offices learn from what we see in disasters globally, and international development uses US expertise. Like a ping pong ball. But each shot gets bigger and bigger after each volley.
Your firm has roughly 30 offices worldwide. Many firms struggle with and are scared by having two or three branch offices. How much effort is involved in keeping that shipping headed in the right direction? What is your secret?
We have 30 locations with 400 staff members on four continents. I found it challenging to lead the firm, but not too complex since the same mission unites us; make the world a better, safer place. This is not a hollow marketing slogan. We really mean it. Just hire right. Then trust and serve them with all you got. Set one vision and goals. Set up the right strategies. Build cohesive teams. Decentralize decision-making trees. Make each team accountable for results by using transparent financials. Communicate with all channels, internally and externally. That’s about it.
Concerning mentoring and the opportunity to run one’s own office, your firm seems to offer tremendous opportunities for personal growth. What is your approach, and what have you found that works best?
We set our goal to double our size every five years. Why? Because it will provide more opportunities for our staff and it will have a bigger impact on the world. We want to merge with like-minded companies each year. I see a huge benefit to this. I also see that the previous owners get a second wind. They can focus on what they really like to do. They usually have an excellent younger second line. We give them a significant opportunity to grow together. The learning opportunity is so steep for both sides. This is so cool. Love it.
One of our vision statements said, “Positively impact society as a 1,000-person firm.” This has been around for a while, but we will get there in about 5 to 10 years.
Of all the projects and recovery efforts you have been involved in, would you describe the one or two that you are the most memorable about and why?
We are currently deeply involved in Ukraine’s reconstruction. We are working with the UN to repair war-damaged schools and high-rise apartments. We have 100 local staff and growing. I spend about half of my time there now. We see this as a part of the effort to reverse Putin’s destructive agenda. We should have no room for killers, rapists, and thieves. I saw firsthand what Putin’s army put people through there. It is much worse than what CNN shows you, by the way.
We need to be unified to confront this tragedy. Believe it or not, engineering is part of the solution. We fix faster than Putin breaks. We are under constant air raids, but we are committed. We will be there until all is fixed.
Successful firms plan for ownership transition and fir h to get by is a trend too. You are personally on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. What advice would you give to young engineers?
Well, I think it was the famous John Maxwell who once said, “If you love what you do, you never work again.” It is true for me. I don’t think I “worked” for at least 20 years now. You need to find your passion and stick to it.
In terms of your personal legacy, what do you think you will be remembered for, and what are you most proud of?
In a jungle of Haiti last year, I met a young mason using a 135-degree hook per ACI details for school reconstruction. I asked him how he knew that. He said, “what’s wrong with you? It is common sense.” That’s the legacy I want to create in many more places before I leave this place.■