Golder Associates
Specialty: Transportation, oil and gas, mining, water resources, land development
Management: Joe Hachey, vice president, western region; Doug Dunster, managing principal; group leaders Bob Anderson, Cathy Smith, Travis McGrath, Matt Benson
Founded: 1960
Headquarters: Redmond
2005 revenues: $15.7 million (local office, net)
Projected 2006 revenues: $16.8 million
Current projects: Talus, Issaquah; Lawson Hills, Black Diamond; Northwest Pipeline replacement; proposed Juneau Access highway, Alaska; oil pipeline, Russian Far East
Photo courtesy Golder Associates Golder staff spent months in Alaska conducting geo-hazard assessments and geologic mapping of over 22 miles of rough terrain. The work is helping the Alaska Department of Transportation determine the feasibility of a road from Juneau to a ferry terminal near Haines.
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Golder Associates has had an outstanding year, according to principal and Redmond office manager Doug Dunster. The Redmond-based firm has 4,000 employees in 22 countries. Locally, it added 29 new staff in 2006 and recently opened an office in downtown Seattle.
Worker crunch
Dunster said some Golder offices have had difficulty signing up engineers and other skilled employees.
“The schools just aren’t putting out the students they used to,” he said. “(But) because Seattle’s such an attractive place to live and people want to live here, it hasn’t affected us so much as elsewhere.”
Helpful high energy prices
Dunster said high energy prices have helped the firm’s work in some sectors. Golder is helping the Centralia coal mine and power plant, the state’s largest source of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, expand its mining operations.
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Golder is also helping a consortium of coal companies explore the possibility of reducing their impact on the climate by studying the potential for sequestering carbon dioxide deep underground.
High energy prices haven’t slowed down the energy-intensive mining industry, partly because metal prices have also shot through the roof. And, an influx of funding from the state’s new gasoline tax has spurred a major increase in new projects at the state Department of Transportation, another big Golder client.
Going to Russia
Staff from Golder’s local office often work far afield. Recently, local staff have been doing environmental work on Russia’s Sakhalin Island as part of developing a 1,000-mile oil pipeline for the Russian Far East.
Dunster |
“They are much more in tune with those kind of issues than we would assume,” Dunster said. International backers of the project have also required it to take a careful approach to river crossings and other environmental concerns.
International environmental groups, meanwhile, have complained of the effects of a pipeline crossing hundreds of salmon-bearing streams and of offshore drilling in areas frequented by gray whales.
Dunster said the biggest difference working in a remote part of Russia has been cultural.
“The locals dress up much fancier,” he said. “Women wearing high heels to go work in the snow.”