The Sept. 11 jet crashes into the World Trade Center in New York threw Seattle-based Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire directly into the international spotlight. Skilling engineers were on the center’s design team when it was built more than three decades ago.

“In the first three days (after the catastrophic attacks), we had 85 requests for interviews,” recalled chairman and CEO Jon Magnusson. “We answered every one of them within an hour of the request. We felt it was important.”

The first call came from ABC News.

“I said: ‘I shouldn’t talk. I’d only be speculating. I was in the sixth grade when the engineering was done.’ “ But he also said his sixth-grade fascination with the World Trade Center is what drew him into engineering. That only stoked the ABC caller more. “And I knew that if I didn’t talk, they would find somebody who would, and I’d be better than some whose speculation was far off-base.”

The firm split the interviews between Magnusson, who appeared in several Daily Journal of Commerce stories, company president Ron Klemencic, earthquake engineering director John Hooper and chief operating officer Brian McIntyre.

Klemencic happened to have also recently become chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Interview requests to Skilling have eased, but Klemencic continues fielding inquiries from around the world as discussion builds over long-term ramifications from Sept. 11.

The 80-engineer firm, meanwhile, has some huge public and private projects in design or construction but is already feeling a drop-off in office buildings from the near-halt nationwide in construction of office projects initially brought on by the dot-com bust.

The firm totals 120 employees and generated $18.8 million in revenues for 2000. It projects 2001 revenues at an essentially stagnant $18.9 million.

“We think (the firm’s employee total) will stay about the same,” Magnusson said. “With economic conditions as they are, we won’t grow. Commercial office buildings had stopped before Sept. 11 and they’re not coming back anytime soon.”

The firm’s largest project is the $425 million construction of the new Seahawks Stadium and adjoining exhibition hall on the former Kingdome site on the south edge of downtown Seattle. Construction is past two-thirds done, with completion expected in time for the start of next fall’s NFL season.

Another large project is the new William Nakamura Federal Courthouse in Seattle, which is early in construction on the north edge of downtown Seattle.

Also, the new Seattle Public Library, in early construction in downtown Seattle, and the Letterman Digital Arts Complex, a film-making studio, in San Francisco’s Presidio area.

The firm also holds the engineering contract on the new San Jose airport, “but it’s kind of stuck with the rest of aviation” and hotels in the aftermath of Sept. 11, Magnusson said.

Medical facilities work, such as new hospitals, looks like the firm’s biggest area of growth for now, along with museum work. Skilling holds the engineering contract on the expansion of the Museum of Flight in Seattle.