Summit Engineering marks 25th anniversary

Thomas Gallagher is such a hands-on manager that he personally built many of the desks used by employees of his Renobased engineering company.

Not that Summit Engineering Corp.

is a small-time outfit.

Anything but.

With annual billings of $10 million, it has ranked in the 400 biggest engineering design firms in the nation.

Its staff totals 130 about 100 in Reno, the remainder at offices Las Vegas, Elko and Ely.

Most of northwest Reno from McCarran Boulevard to Verdi was designed and engineered by the company.

So was Double Diamond Ranch in south Reno.

So were gold mines in eastern Nevada, casinos in Las Vegas, Laughlin and Reno and the Alturas transmission line that brings power to Reno from the northwest.

As the company this month marks its 25th anniversary, seven design teams work at the company's Reno headquarters creating plans for more major subdivisions throughout the region.

Elsewhere in the office, employees work on projects ranging from soils analysis to photogrammetry to the acquisition of water rights.

The breadth of services provided by the company is rare, Gallagher said, but he and Executive Vice President Don McHarg long ago set a limit on the services the company will provide.

"We're not going to jump into anything that we personally don't know anything about," Gallagher said.

And the company won't handle every large-scale land development project that comes its way.

"If we don't believe in a project as good for the community, we won't take it on," said Gallagher, who added that the company isn't afraid of political controversy that sometimes surrounds some of its biggest proposals.

This isn't, however, a slick consulting company.

No one wears a tie in the office.

Gallagher, who grew up in a well-known Elko ranching and business family, props up his cowboy boots in an office surrounded by hunting trophies.

"Out in the public, we're known as a bunch of cowboys," Gallagher said.

"And that's just fine." That informal, Nevada-centric style is one that

Gallagher and McHarg have worked hard to maintain ever since they were part of a group of four who launched the firm from Gallagher's kitchen table in 1978.

(They bought out the other two founders in 1981.) The company grew rapidly almost from the start, winning a contract to do the master plan for the 3,000 acres of Northgate shortly after it was created.

But as the company's billings sometimes grew by as much as 30 percent a year, Gallagher pulled in the reins.

"It's easy to grow too fast," he said, explaining that his management style relies on the personal touch knowing employees, knowing the names of their spouses.Whenever he started losing that touch, he knew the company was getting too big.

The company is built, too, on hiring recent college and high school graduates, putting up with their mistakes in order to benefit from their creativity, and helping them progress through careers.

"Let people go ahead and be who they are," Gallagher said.

With a laugh, he said his management style has been developed by trial and error.

"In 25 years, you do a lot of trials and make a lot of errors."

As Gallagher builds desks for designers and engineers he can't find anything on the market that meets the company's needs McHarg takes care of employees' computer needs.

And Gallagher remains one of the company's chief visionaries, drawing out large-scale plans for developments that stretch across hundreds often thousands of acres.

Again, he's a hands-on guy.

He bumps around sagebrush country before he sets to work, making certain that he doesn't plan a street to runs off a cliff.

"It's never the same," he said.

"The land is different.

The project is different."

The company's workload, which some in the building industry view as a good indication of things to come, has been exceptionally heavy in recent months.

"We're running about as strong as we've ever been," Gallagher said.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the company's track record? It hardly sells at all.

Its last sales brochure, for instance, was printed 13 years ago.