Three years after engineering executive Omid Nabipoor left the Rose City, he decided to move back because, “well, it’s Portland,” he said.

After serving most of his 23 years with Interface Engineering as its president, Nabipoor departed for Los Angeles to become managing principal of Integral Group. But recently he joined Sazan Group as a managing principal in Portland.

“I discovered that Portland is such a special city as far as the level of architecture and engineering,” he said. “It’s just so fabulous for a city this size that I just felt like I wasn’t finished doing good things for my clients and I wasn’t finished with Portland.”

Nabipoor said he is looking forward to again focusing on the Northwest. Seattle-based Sazan Group opened a Portland office about a year and a half ago, he said.

“We have a very new office here and we hope to do good work,” he said. “I felt like I missed my clients and missed the people I used to work with for so many years. I felt like I needed to come back and help my clients accomplish their missions.”

Sazan Group is looking to use its Portland office to grow its business handling health care, commercial, institutional and education projects, company President Nader Dabestani said.

Dabestani added that he felt “incredibly fortunate” that Nabipoor chose to join the firm.

“He has great credentials with sustainable design for mechanical and electrical system and he will further enhance our capabilities,” Dabestani said.

Nabipoor will have more of a hands-on approach with Sazan Group, he said, partly because it’s a smaller firm, with about 70 employees.

“Sazan is a company where we feel our mission is to do what our clients need us to do with thoughtfulness and due attention, like having principals on the project,” he said. “It’s not like some firms where you see a principal at the beginning of the project and then don’t see them again. We have a bit of a different approach with that.”

When Nabipoor was at Interface, the focus was always on green building. He wants to ensure that it’s the same at Sazan Group. Sustainability and energy efficiency should be elements of all types of projects, he said.

“I feel we have to be mindful enough on every project to determine how we can lessen its impact on the environment,” he said. “The most environmental thing would be not to build anything. But we have to.

“I feel like there is a lot of mindfulness here. It’s more natural to do really sustainable work in a really sustainable city. You’re not fighting against the grain and people appreciate that value here, with a really good, deliberate approach.”

There were some things Nabipoor liked about L.A., such as more ethnic and economic diversity. But extreme opulence was more evident than in Portland, he said, with some people ostensibly showing off their wealth.

Humility is a more important character trait than pride, he said.

“I think it’s a saying that humble pie is a nonfat, zero-calorie dessert that everyone should eat because it helps us focus on what we do and why we do it,” he said.

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