Pennoni’s Employee Spotlight series gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the talented individuals who make our company thrive. Each month, we highlight a team member’s journey, passion for engineering and innovation, and unique impact at Pennoni.
This month, we’re featuring Liz Gugliotti, PE, TURP, senior project engineer in our Natick, MA office. Liz has 17 years of experience in compliance consulting related to state and federal environmental regulations, including auditing, permitting, chemicals management and emergency preparedness. She graduated from Cornell University in 2008 with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in chemical engineering, and has worked at the Natick office ever since. She has consulted for industries including pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, metal plating and finishing, electronics, plastics, and textiles. She has been a licensed professional engineer in chemical engineering since 2013, and became a licensed Toxics Use Reduction Planner in January 2025.
You’ve been with Irwin, now a division of Pennoni, for 17 years. What’s kept you inspired and engaged in your work throughout your career here?
The environmental practice allows me to have ongoing relationships with clients who manufacture a huge variety of products with critical applications. That means getting to see a lot of innovative processes in action and it is always so inspiring to think of the ingenuity and attention to detail that has gone into making these processes work. And our clients are really committed to doing the right thing to minimize their environmental impact. But many times there is still room for improvement in pollution prevention, emergency preparedness, and management systems and it is great to be able to help facilities with improving their environmental programs.
You recently became a certified Toxics Use Reduction (TUR) Planner — congratulations! What does that certification mean to you, and how do you see it shaping your future work?
Being a Toxics Use Reduction Planner is all about helping manufacturing clients who use chemicals as they strive to develop solutions to make their processes more efficient, safer, and less wasteful. This is a major priority for the environmental community in Massachusetts because, in addition to the environmental benefits, it often leads to companies finding solutions that will ultimately save them money. The TUR Planner certification allows me to support companies from a variety of industries by making sure they fully understand their process and think carefully about all the possible benefits of their options to make informed decisions.
You’ve worked across a range of industries, from pharmaceuticals to metal finishing. What do you find most rewarding about helping clients navigate environmental compliance and remediation?
For me the most rewarding types of projects are ones where the client is looking to make a change to their operations and looks to us for help navigating the management of change process. There are so many things to consider for process changes like chemicals management, safety, air permitting, wastewater permitting, and contingency planning. They can create a lot of pitfalls if not done correctly so it is very rewarding when we can help clients get it right the first time!
You’ve expressed interest in expanding industrial engineering work across Pennoni and getting involved in networking events. What excites you most about those opportunities?
I think environmental services are great for cross marketing because they allow us to have an ongoing relationship with a client even after a construction project is completed. Many of our other service lines often interface with environmental such as civil, MEP, and water / wastewater so this represents a lot of opportunities to team up. And we are always interested to hear more about our other service lines to cross market them to our industrial clients as well!
As a senior engineer balancing technical expertise and family life, what advice would you give to other professionals striving to grow their careers while maintaining balance outside of work?
I find that work-life balance is most effective when it becomes a habit that you practice consistently, and not an exception that happens once in a while. That means setting a schedule and communicating it to others, planning ahead whenever you can, and thinking about what resources are there to help if things change either at work or at home. And remembering that work-life balance is for everyone and you are not alone!