MARK

Baker has pushed the field forward to support two more supertall building booms. “He has helped make soil mechanics more of a science,” says R. Shankar Nair of Chicago-based Teng & Associates. It retained Baker for the 1,074-ft-tall Waterview Tower, now under construction on Wacker Drive.

In all, Baker has consulted on seven of the 20 tallest buildings as ranked by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, including the top four Taipei 101, the two Petronas Towers and Sears. In Chicago alone, Baker has handled more than 80% of the high-rise foundations built after 1955 and has been instrumental in helping contractors develop cost-effective measures, including foundations that bear on soil rather than deeper rock. Rock caissons cost three to five times more.

Hands-On

STS Consultants

STS Consultants

STS Consultants

STS Consultants

STS Consultants

STS Consultants Baker family (top and third from top) knows all about soil, including son Mark, STS driller (second from top). After college, Baker returned to running (fourth from top). Gnaedinger recruited Baker (fifth from top). Baker, Walton on a mountain (bottom).

Colleagues remark that Baker excels like no other in tackling complex foundation problems in an easygoing way. Harry Poulos, an Australia-based geotech professor and consultant who also reviewed Burj Dubai, calls Baker the most hands-on constructibility expert he knows. “People can come up with smart designs, but Clyde might say, ‘Come on, we won’t be able to build this.’ He has sort of been there, done that,” Poulos says.

Baker also is practically a brand name. AECOM, which acquired STS last spring, had been looking to add geotechincal services to its portfolio and found Baker’s firm a natural fit. “Geotechincal engineering is the cornerstone of the work that we do,” says John M. Dionisio, president and chief executive of AECOM. He calls Baker, STS senior principal engineer, an icon. “I think people like that in any organization just set the tone and the pace,” he says.

Even though Baker worked for several years as president of STS, he says he never really took responsibility for management. Baker understands the importance of revenue and income but hates pushing paper. “He did not like to be involved in administration,” explains Robert G. Lukas, a former STS engineer who left to start up his own firm in the early 1990s.

That was a troubled time in STS history. A series of managerial missteps took STS into a bleeding solid-waste business that pulled down profits. The engineering side of the business remained profitable, but not enough to avoid bankruptcy, which came in 1994. Baker and 19 other “five percenters” went out on a limb to borrow from their retirements and took out loans to buy the firm and set it right. After that, STS was on a growth path again. “They had gotten their problems behind them,” Dionisio says.

But Baker’s reputation as engineer, historian and mentor is sterling. Thomas W. Wolf, current president of STS, says that when he was a young engineer with STS in Wisconsin, Baker was the kind of person engineers sought “to either get the answer or get the affirmation that you had the final answer.” In pushing foundation bearing pressures, “somebody has to step out and say, ‘Yes, we can do this,’ and he has done that,” adds Lukas.

Baker is a little like an absent-minded professor at times, says Wolf. He once stepped outside his house to find his car missing, and then headed down to a dealership to buy a replacement. “He had parked it at his church,” Wolf recalls.

On the Move

The 45-time marathon runner and state distance champion gets around, with a globetrotting schedule at 77 years old that would put even an Olympian out of breath.

A college track star, Baker ran his first marathon in Boston in 1953 and kept up with pacesetters until he “hit the wall,” or rather the Newton hills, near the 15th mile. He returned to competitive running in the 1970s to run Boston seven more times. His best marathon was in 1982 in Miami at 51 years old, clocking in at two hours and 50 minutes.

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Shelbourne Development Group Inc. Bearing pressures in Chicago are on the rise.

He still jogs nearly every day, except in winter, when Baker hustles up and down his Evanston, Ill., apartment building’s staircase until he reaches the equivalent of an 80-story climb. Even after battling cancer in 1994 and surviving treatment, Baker still runs a decent, 12-minute mile.

For Baker, regular exercise is not just about physical release. It is also mental and spiritual. “I have had a few out-of-body experiences running,” Baker says. “Some people may say that I’m hallucinating,” he says, with an explosive laugh, adding, “I guess I’m a reflective person.” Baker even works while exercising. “I’ll solve problems on the run,” he says.

A practicing Quaker who converted in 1957, Baker’s down-to-earth adventures in the soil dovetail with his back-to-basics spiritual journey. Not wanting to step into the limelight, Baker frequently underplays his long list of accolades, never letting the

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