Icicle Creek Engineers

Specialty: Geotechnical and geological engineering
Principals: Brian Beaman (founder), Kathy Killman (president) and Jim Brisbine (principal engineer)
2002 revenues: $700,000
Projected 2003 revenues: $1 million

Brian Beaman still considers working as a geological engineer “more of a hobby for me than a job.” He’s 51 now, and has owned his own firm, Icicle Creek Engineers in Issaquah, for seven years.

The firm doubled in size last year from five to 10 employees when a group headed by principal engineer Jim Brisbine and senior project geologist Konrad Moeller came over from Amec.

Brisbine’s group was working on the Issaquah Highlands master-planned community for developer Port Blakely Communities, which Icicle Creek has also worked on for four years, so the move combined that work.

Icicle Creek has been designing huge water retention ponds at Issaquah Highlands lately. The next two plastic-lined ponds to go in there will each hold about 2 million cubic feet of water.

Another Issaquah project that has been on hold, the Southeast Bypass highway, “is starting to come back to life” to add work at Icicle Creek, Beaman said.

“It should get through environmental review this year and then go to design,” he said. Icicle works on the project’s environmental review team with Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Beaman started the firm in 1996, after working for years as a senior project engineer and geologist at GeoEngineers. He came up with the company’s name not because he was doing work along Icicle Creek near Leavenworth, but because he had enjoyed a lot of rock climbing there in his youth.

The firm moved into bigger and better office space last year in the Shirey Building in Issaquah.

Beaman said growth will continue, potentially up to 25 employees within the next five years, “but that just depends on the people. I could hire 25 now, but it’s a matter of getting the right people. It will probably take five years to get those people.”