Engineering firm keeps family atmosphere

At Holdrege and Kull, or "H&K," as employees call it, it feels like family. Their offices, in two homes off Searls Street in Nevada City, have neatly cut lawns, flower boxes on the front porch and a tire swing that invites a spin. Even the open garage is organized.

Inside, two friendly dogs greet you and you can feel the easy camaraderie among the staff. Afternoons, kids come in from school to play and ride bikes till their parents are off work.

What's impressive is that H&K is also a premier engineering firm in Northern California, Oregon and Nevada - and that the award-winning local company did the geotechnical engineering for the new Oakland Bay Bridge foundations, among other large projects.

Engineers Tom Holdredge and Chuck Kull - the H&K - started out small. They met at another firm in the late 1980s and became buddies. When they teamed up to start their own firm in 1993, their first lab was in Chuck's garage up on Banner, and their first office out of his living room.

When neighbor, John Atkinson, a butcher at SPD, volunteered to do their lab work, they moved the lab into his garage. Holdrege laughs as he talks about those early days.

"When you do soil testing, you have to label your containers and John was using two pie pans," he said. "His dog had taken a bite out of one of the pans and so the labels were 'bites' and 'no bites.' Hey, it worked!" Atkinson became their first employee and is still with the company.

As the company grew, they rented an office on Main Street in Nevada City. One of the company's first big projects was using their geotechnical expertise in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

"Tom and I crawled under a couple hundred houses during those months. It was especially scary when you would be down there during an aftershock," Kull said.

That's when the company started hiring and in 1997, it bought the first house on Searls, adding its new building in 2003. The company now employs more than 75 engineers, field-engineering technicians and inspectors, laboratory technicians and administrative support staff.

In the spring of 2003, they got the bid to do the geotechnical engineering for the two new footings for the new span of the Bay Bridge on Yerba Buena Island. The footings were roughly 70 feet by 70 feet by 90 feet deep and extended nearly 30 feet below sea level.

Working with blasting contractors, they designed the excavation to withstand earthquakes and blasting below the level of the bay.

"Chuck came up with an innovative system that used 40-foot long bolts and rock fall netting to keep the walls from falling in on the foundation hole being blasted. Even a small rock falling 90 feet can kill someone," Holdrege said.

"It was exciting to design a very elaborate shoring system that no one had seen before," Kull said, adding that the design insured safety and saved Caltrans hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"We call it 'value engineering.' We look at the best way to deliver a quality product and to also save the client money," Holdrege said.

Here in Nevada County, the company monitored and tested the fill and concrete in the recent construction at Sierra Nevada Hospital. They also help residents deal with the problem of mining tunnels undermining their properties. In one recent project, where a mine shaft opened up in front of a house, they discovered that the problem started 70 feet down, but filled the hole with concrete and rebar.

"Most of what we do, when the job's done, you can't see. And if it is successful, you'll never see it," said Robin Milam, director of Business Services.

"But we still work with Mr. and Mrs. Smith who walk in and pet the dogs, and need a soils geotechnical report required by the county to build a garage," said Jeff Cox, staff geologist and marketing director.

With all of its growth and success, H&K has not lost the friendly work environment that began with two buddies working together.

"Our mission statement talks about retaining our family atmosphere. Holding onto that is the most important thing to me," Holdrege said. "It contributes to our success because people stay."

"It's fun to walk down the hall and pop your head into someone's office and talk about their families and kids," Kull said. "In our company, we want to embody the spirit of our community, of people helping other people."