Wallace Design Collective

Happy New Year! 2019 looks to be a busy year and as we move forward, it’s worthwhile to look back at the highlights from 2018.

Wallace Engineering started the year by welcoming two new principals to our ownership group – James Granich and Matt Schachle – and three new associates – Jeff Denton, Alan Taylor and Alec Bass. All have been instrumental in the growth of our firm and we’re proud of their accomplishments. We feel fortunate to have them as part of our company leadership.

Our goal of continued growth of the firm both excites our employees and provides opportunity. In April, Harry Coates joined our staff, and we began offering roofing assessments and inspections services. These new services have been very successful and are expected to continue to grow in the coming year. Our civil engineering group had another banner year with a substantial increase in project work and personnel, with seven of our 19 new hires joining the civil group. Some of this growth can be contributed to the increase of residential subdivisions work. Currently, we have more than a dozen subdivisions in some stage of design. Additionally, this work relies heavily on our planning group which has seen growth in projects and personnel as well.

All our structural engineering groups – volume, traditional, industrial, forensic and special inspections – exceeded the goals and expectations set at the start of the year, some by large margins. The forensic group, which includes our roofing inspection services, responded quickly when Hurricane Michael hit Florida in October and when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook Alaska in December. We were able to send out engineers at a moment’s notice to evaluate affected structures and give feedback to our clients about the future of their buildings.

In September, I formed a leadership team to work on improving the organizational health of the company and to help me prioritize and complete our strategic planning initiatives. This team has been working to define and refine what makes Wallace Engineering tick. After contemplating what makes Wallace the great firm we believe it is, we redefined our core purpose: to make lives better. This concept drives our decisions and challenges us to always strive to be better. In addition, we restated our core values of responsiveness, flexibility, quality and creativity. We’ve long believed that our clients expect and deserve services with these attributes.

I certainly think we were successful in our core purpose this year not only through the projects we worked on and helped bring to fruition but also through the volunteerism our employees provided through our new community outreach efforts. Wallace Engineering has committed to providing each of our employees with eight hours of paid time off annually to be used on volunteerism efforts. In 2018, our employees volunteered at 23 different organizations located locally in the cities in which we office as well as internationally. Additional success came through the new health defined contribution insurance program that allows employees to select their insurance coverage based on personal and family needs and through the expansion of our maternity and paternity leave.

Our rallying cry going into the new year is to take this firm to the next level. We look forward to 2019 being another outstanding year and we thank you for your continued support!

– Tom