When potential clients consider hiring your architecture and engineering firm, the first question they ask is almost always, “Have you worked on projects like this before?” Today, LAN can confidently say yes to this inquiry across nearly all major market sectors and disciplines. Sixty years ago, however, company founder John Lacz had to prove what LAN could do. He built a reputation by developing a specialty in housing authority projects.

In the 1960s and 1970s, garbage was frequently burned, and many housing authorities had tall, chimney-like structures called incinerator stacks built to vent the resulting emissions. The environmental testing of those emissions was called stack testing, and this work is what got LAN’s foot in the door in the housing authority market. When work was not available in New Jersey, Lacz traveled wherever opportunities arose. He would pack up his Volkswagen Beetle and go to cities such as Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to test incinerator stacks.