By: Brian Koerner

Sixteen years ago, Twitter and Instagram didn’t exist and Facebook was just getting started. The iPod Mini was the latest Apple gadget. The average price of a movie ticket was around $6 and a postage stamp was 37 cents.

What were you doing 16 years ago today?

I co-founded Engineering Solutions 16 years ago on March 1, 2004. I left a secure director position at Valley Engineering for the American dream: starting my own business. Over the past 16 years, we’ve done some amazing projects, everything from small beam designs to the Harrisonburg City Hall and Quirk Hotel.

I have a special place in my heart for our early projects as it really was the whole deal – from creating a phone book ad, setting up insurance, finding prospective clients, answering the phone, doing calculations, drafting up everything in AutoCAD, delivering printed drawings, creating the invoice, and collecting the money. Our work was done with one person on the civil engineering side and one person on the structural engineering side. We now have 10 structural engineers and three drafters, plus support staff. We’ve come a long way!

As I was reflecting on the pride of our early projects, Antioch Church came to mind as one of my favorites. This was a project performed with Lantz of Winchester in 2004. At that time, my livelihood depended on each project getting out the door on time and within budget. Some things are a lot different than they were 16 years ago, but some things will never change. Our livelihood still depends on on-time and on-budget delivery of projects. We continue to strive for excellent service for many years to come.

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