Nurses and teachers receive widespread approbation for their contributions to society. Rightly so. Another group, however, rarely receives such accolades while their work reaches to the very foundations of our society: engineers.
“I think engineers are unsung heroes. They’re at least unknown heroes in our communities. Very few people realize that engineering touches every aspect of your daily life,” said Patty Mamola, executive director of the Nevada Board of Professional Engineers. “The water you drink, the roads you drive on, the house you live in, the buildings you work in, your HVAC, your electricity. Every aspect in your life you can think of engineers touch. But yet, no one really understands or knows what an engineer does.”
So, what exactly do engineers do?
Lay of the Land
Vince Griffith, founder and president of Reno Engineering, a commercial, civil engineering consulting firm, explained. “How many people do you need to remodel your kitchen? It’s not just one person. There’s the plumber, the electrician, a guy putting the cabinets in, a guy that does the floors, a guy that does the paint.” The same is true in the average engineering project. He added, “There is a mix [of engineers] on almost all generic commercial real estate projects.”
In the case of designing a commercial real estate project like a factory or warehouse distribution center, “You have a civil engineer, a structural engineer, an electrical engineer, and a mechanical engineer,” Griffith explained. Whether working with buildings, bridges, electrical design, sewer, plumbing, roads, or any other number of elements, these engineers are a vital part of safe and effective cities and businesses.
Regardless of the type of engineering, the goal is to successfully plan for a project and lay out all the elements necessary in order to reach a successful project conclusion and help developers and investors bring their dreams to life without creating any safety or legal nightmares.
When it comes to engineering connected to commercial real estate, companies work across two different sectors: public and private. Edward Taney, founder of Taney Engineering, works on the private side. “We’re on the private sector meaning we deal with industrial, single-family builders, commercial retail builders, even some of the casinos on the strip,” said Taney. “All of that is considered private sector work. The opposite of that, and several firms go this direction, is for public works.” Some firms work specifically with the local municipalities and public agencies like Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) in this public sector side of the job.
Project Types
Just as the variety of engineering jobs is growing and developing, the number of projects they work on is infinite, and it changes with time and demand.
In northern Nevada, Griffith said it depends on what the economy is doing, which varies widely. It can include working on auto dealerships, extended stay hotels, residential multi-family dwellings, offices, manufacturing or factories, and warehouses. He said, “Each of those have a heyday and then they go quiet for a while.” Regardless, when the time comes and the developers ask, engineers are there to help make it happen. Griffith added, “We haven’t done an office building in a long time. But when they come back, and they will someday, we’ll be there.”
In southern Nevada, GCW Engineers, also a full-service civil engineering firm, works on a variety of developmental project types often connected to transportation, structural engineering, flood control, land development, waste and wastewater management, survey, construction management, and master planning.
Tim McCoy, president, explains GCW’s role with those owners or developers and the local agencies. “We help them not only with the infrastructure design and the grading and things, but we also help them entitle the land and get it zoned correctly,” said McCoy.
Regardless of which part of the state you’re in, Robert Finnegan, president and owner of FEA Consulting Engineers, points out that there aren’t many differences when working between north and south. “It’s been pretty seamless,” Finnegan said. Building departments work together and create the best situation possible. He added, “They meet quite often and try to make sure that there’s a uniform approach to construction in Nevada.”
Due Diligence
When an engineering consulting company approaches a project, their first step is to walk the client through due diligence and ask important questions so that no one ends up with costly surprises later on in the project. These include questions regarding each part of engineering from drainage to power to transportation.
Due diligence doesn’t conclude after a check on basic local regulations. Kurt Goebel, senior vice president and the environmental division manager for Nevada operations at Converse Consulting an environmental engineering firm, explained the importance of completing environmental due diligence.
“A lot of times we hear about people that are acquiring property and they haven’t done their environmental due diligence,” said Goebel. There’s not a fee or a fine for not completing it, but in the long term, it can cause a lot of problems. “It can harm the business because if they buy a piece of property and they don’t know about some past contamination and they haven’t done their environmental due diligence, then they become responsible for it,” he added.
Consulting Firms
Consulting firms work as a middle-man between developers and the regulatory community. Goebel said, “You have good relationships with the regulatory community, and you’re able to work on your client’s behalf to keep them out of trouble, but also to work with the regulator in a manner that’s constructive and produces an end goal.”
When consulting works well, it makes everyone happy. For Goebel and Converse Consulting, it means the best possible result for clients often saves them money. “We’ve certainly been able to help clients save hundreds of thousands or certainly in one case millions of dollars through creative and regulatory backed solutions.”
McCoy further explains the process. When developers come, “We help them not only with the infrastructure design and the grading and things, but we also help them entitle the land and get it zoned correctly and go through all of the preliminary engineering with the local agency jurisdiction that it’s in,” he said.
To McCoy, the goal is simple. It’s about, “helping our clients, no matter if they’re a long time Nevada client or a new client, to get through the entitlement and approval process as quickly and efficiently as we can so that they can start turning dirt.”
Challenges for engineers
A huge challenge, especially for smaller developers who rely on loans from banks or lending companies, is the rising interest rates. Taney described the experience of engineers and their response to this.
Not everyone has access to the lending necessary for success. “What’s slowing the economy right now is the smaller to medium-sized developers who are very reliant on getting money from a bank or from hard money lenders or from equity firms or whatever the case may be,” said Taney. “The interest rates have just kind of dried that stream up.”
At the same time, inflation has challenged businesses working on long-term projects. Finnegan said, “Inflation has hit the pricing of these projects. From the time that we start design to the time that we finish design, these projects can escalate by one-and-a-half times.” In a two-year project, this can cause serious problems and create financial issues.
Rising interest rates and inflation are also accompanied by increased regulations. As cities grow, so do the rulebooks. With Clark County’s tremendous growth has come an increase in regulation. “You ultimately end up with a little bit more strictness with the governing entities. You’re constantly having to adjust to that,” Taney shared.
Water represents another facet of problem-solving engineers face. Mamola explained, “Water’s a challenge. [In] both northern and southern Nevada, we deal with water scarcity. How do we manage our water efficiently? What about sustainability? Engineers are involved in developing innovative solutions for water conservation, purification, distribution, source, that kind of thing.”
On top of all these challenges, demand for engineers has been sky high. Griffith looks forward to things slowing down a bit in response to the interest rates and inflation. While many take this as a negative, Griffith is hopeful. “If it does level off, my personal opinion is people will be able to be more focused, more creative, and get more done. I think we will get more done if we have less of that craze that’s been going on for the last three years.”
Safe & Efficient A Delicate Balance
Mamola described emerging technologies as a major trend. “We’re in the fourth industrial revolution right now. In the engineering realm, things are exponentially changing,” she said.
“You kind of think back just in our lifetimes about what’s happened. The advent of the internet, computer systems, cell phones. Look what we’re seeing now: artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and it’s accelerating quickly.” This trend means regulations also need to change.
Mamola continued, “We’re not regulating people for the sake of regulation. It truly is about public protection. How do we keep the public safe?” On one hand, it requires regulations. On the other it requires clarity and deregulation.
Questions like “How do we keep things efficient and helpful?” have been important to the board she works with in their quest to reduce regulations. Just last year, the governor encouraged further reduction through executive orders requiring the elimination of at least ten regulations.
At the same time, protection requires regulation. In an environment where deregulation is encouraged, mindfulness to the value of regulation is required. Mamola explained, “Do you wait until something really bad happens or do you do it proactively and try to make your case with your politicians that this would be in the best interest of the public to add aerospace engineering or mobility engineering or robotics engineering, whatever that may be. On the regulation side, that’s one of the big challenges.”
Future of Engineering
In an economy where businesses of all types often have trouble finding enough employees, finding young talent is largely a matter of finding the right person for the job.
“There’s always going to be a group of young people that love math and love solving problems. They haven’t cancelled math in schools. As long as there’s that group, engineering firms are going to find talented engineers,” Griffith said.
Robert Finnegan and FEA consulting Engineers just finished working with the Formula 1 Grand Prix development and continues to engineer with many different high-profile projects in Vegas and across the world. For young people looking to make a tangible mark on the world through a career while also having a good time, engineering can be a great option.
“To put exciting and engineering in the same sentence is rare, but I got a little bit of proof of that. We really do some fun stuff. If you’re an engineer, you’re there from the start, from the sketches from the architect all the way to opening day,” said Finnegan.
This excitement undergirds the work engineers do. Through the entire process from due diligence to strolling through a master plan community they helped create twenty years ago, engineers are quietly at work throughout our society. At first glance they may not be high-profile, but their work is high-priority. Like teachers and nurses, they are shaping our society for the better.
