TD&H (Great Falls, MT) grows steadily in Spokane, builds public-sector niche

Montana-based engineering company’s Spokane office bills $900,000 annually

By Megan Cooley Spokane Journal of Business

Steve Thieme, regional marketing director, and Clifton Morey, regional manager, of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins’ Spokane office, say the firm has landed work with a wide variety of clients here, including outlying small towns.

Steve Thieme, regional marketing director, and Clifton Morey, regional manager, of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins’ Spokane office, say the firm has landed work with a wide variety of clients here, including outlying small towns.

When Thomas, Dean & Hoskins Inc. http://www.tdandh.com/ entered the Spokane market in 1987, it employed one engineer and had even fewer clients here.

Since then, growth has been steady at the Great Falls, Mont.-based engineering company’s Spokane office, which now employs 15 people and bills out about $900,000 in engineering fees annually, much of it for work on public-sector projects, says Spokane-based Regional Manager Clifton Morey.

“The steady growth is by design,” he says. “When you hire people, you don’t want to say, ‘Goodbye,’ once a project is over.”

The company, which employs about 80 people overall, opened its Spokane office because it felt there was room for another civil consulting firm, but having an office here also was a way to move mid-career engineers into positions of leadership, which is a piece of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins’ overall business philosophy, Morey says.

“Expanding into Spokane was a step in that direction,” he says. “People who’d been with the company for a long time could spread their wings and grow.”

Thomas, Dean & Hoskins office opened in the Rock Pointe Tower, but moved to 303 E. Second, where it now is located, in 1995.

The firm’s services include industrial, transportation, dam and hydropower, geotechnical, and structural engineering. It also plans water resources, treatment and distribution centers; recreational facilities and sports complexes; wastewater collection and treatment plants; and does surveying and site development for commercial, industrial, retail, and residential projects.

About 60 percent of the Spokane office’s business is in public-sector work, including sewer- and water-system design, land surveying, commercial-site development, and subdivision and road planning, Morey says.

“We have kind of a niche there,” he says.

The city of Spokane chose Thomas, Dean & Hoskins in 2001 to act as engineering consultant on the South Perry District Revitalization Project. That project, which includes building new sidewalks, adding pedestrian lighting, trees, bicycle racks, and safer crosswalks along South Perry between Ninth and 11th avenues, is expected to be completed this summer, Morey says.

Thomas, Dean & Hoskins does a lot of business for small towns surrounding Spokane, including Wilbur, Davenport, Spangle, and Rockford, he says.

The office here also has done several engineering and survey projects for Eastern Washington University, including working as a subconsultant to Integrus Architecture PS, of Spokane, on a $10 million, 32,000-square-foot crime laboratory now being designed, Morey says. It’s under contract now with the university to write a master water plan for the Cheney campus, he says.

Other recent projects include design work for the widening of State Route 904, the main highway leading from Interstate 90 to, and then through, Cheney, and working as a subconsultant to Century West Engineering Corp. on the design of the reconstruction of Regal Street between 38th and 49th avenues. Each of those projects cost about $1.5 million. Engineering fees typically comprise 10 percent to 25 percent of a project’s overall total costs, Morey says.

In addition to regular engineering consultation services, which typically are completed before construction begins, Thomas, Dean & Hoskins provides project-management services. Through such services, the company oversees construction quality, project costs, and final inspections. By acting as project manager, Thomas, Dean & Hoskins ensures that work is being done according to plan and that contractors and subcontractors aren’t cutting corners, says Steve Thieme, its regional marketing director.

“It’s a cradle-to-grave service, which a lot of firms don’t offer,” Thieme asserts.

Thomas, Dean & Hoskins’ plan for the future is to continue on a path of steady growth. Morey says he hopes to add an engineer to his staff this year, bringing the total number of licensed engineers at the office to five. The company also plans to build new relationships with architects here.

“There are a lot of architects in Spokane, people we haven’t worked with before,” Thieme says. “We’re starting to make a concerted effort to reach out to them.”

Thieme says that making personal connections with architects won’t be a problem for Morey, who he says “breaks the mold” of the stereotypical engineer, which he jokingly defines as “dweebish” and “introverted.”

Morey couches it differently: “We enjoy the people part of the business as much as the engineering part, especially in the small towns where you get together with the city councils and work with different personalities.”

Thomas, Dean & Hoskins has its roots in Great Falls as a partnership between a Midwest engineering company called Harold Hoskins & Associates and two engineers, Tom Thomas and Wayne Dean, who came to Montana to work for Hoskins in 1955. By the time the company was incorporated in 1965, it had opened its first branch office in Bozeman, Mont. In addition to those two offices and the one in Spokane, the company now has branch offices in Lewiston, Idaho, and Kalispell, Mont.

The Spokane office’s billings are the third largest among the company’s offices, behind those of its Great Falls and Kalispell, Mont., offices, Morey says. He declines to disclose the company’s overall revenues, but says its growth rate has mirrored that of the Spokane office.

“There are always some up years and some down years, but really, since the late 1980s, there’s been consistent steady growth,” Morey says.

http://www.spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article⊂=1510