PBN Leaders & AchieversA wards 2026
LARRY RIGGS
Pare Corp. president
When Larry Riggs became president of Pare Corp. in 1986, it was a single-office practice with about 10 employees. Today, it’s a multidisciplinary civil and environmental engineering firm with nearly 200 employees across four offices in three states.
“Our focus at that time was steady, moderate growth with an eye toward strengthening our core engineering disciplines,” Riggs said. “We had outgrown our office space and moved to our current headquarters in Lincoln in 1988, then expanded our capabilities and geographic reach with our first Massachusetts office.”
A 1976 civil and environmental engineering graduate of the University of Rhode Island, Riggs got his start at the Rhode Island Water Resources Board and the R.I. State Department of Environmental Management before joining Pare, where he’s now spent 50 years. Under his leadership, the firm expanded beyond its civil and structural roots, adding divisions spanning planning, environmental science, geographic information systems, marine, dams, transportation and water resources.
A licensed professional engineer in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Riggs is a founding member and past president of Rhode Island Consulting Engineers and an active voice in the American Council of Engineering Companies of Rhode Island and state and national engineering societies. Colleagues describe him as a mentor as much as a leader.
“It’s the people that I am most proud of – their character, competence and the quality of the work that they perform,” Riggs said.
Riggs’s footprint extends past engineering. He’s served on the boards of the New England Economic Development Service and the Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island, and as chairman of Crossroads Rhode Island, a major nonprofit serving people experiencing homelessness. That work earned him a 2025 Making a Difference Corporation Award from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northern Rhode Island and a 2014 Boys Town Spirit of Youth Award.
“I didn’t come from much. A lot of people have come from far less. My parents taught me respect and compassion for your fellow human being – a lending hand, a nudge upward, a contribution, a smile. I am able, so I do,” he said.
