St. Louis,

MO

Transcript

Civil Design, Inc.

I'm Vickie LaRose, I'm President of Civil Design. We are civil engineers; we specialize in construction management, surveys, site development, transportation and water resources. One of the neatest projects we ever got to work on was Ferguson Florissant School District. He had $60,000 to build a one acre pond, and all the other engineering firms said you can't do that. And we walked in that and said "What happens if we can build you something smaller, will you be happy with that?" Because all he wanted was a pond for these kids in North County that have never caught a fish before, and he was thrilled, and the pond looks great. I mean that's what we do. We've worked on 6440 to watch, to drive down 6440 and the traffic and the new sound walls and everything looks great. And that's kind of what civil engineering does; it's the base of our country really. I mean it gets people where they need to go, and I think we forget about that a lot of times. Or it gets the water to people's houses, and it takes the water away, and I think we all take that for granted.

We just recently bought a firm in Collinsville, along with that I have a business developer, which we didn't have before. So, now I can stay in the office and do a little bit more, and she can help me grow the business, and go out and meet new clients. Grow slow, grow smart, make sure you form your culture, and what your culture and who you are, and make sure it comes through. It's great to come to work, but we also have families, and that's my biggest thing is I want them to go home and have family time too; it's not that we want to work 1 million hours a year. I think that's why people like working here for us. We've had people start as interns and have been here for seven years now. I had no idea when I took out the SBA loan where I would be today.

I don't take any credit for this award; it's all my employees. Without them I would not be here. I could not be where I'm at today without good people working behind me, and it's great, it's fun, and I love working with each and every one of them. It's a kind of a validation that we're doing something good and we're doing something right, and up until this point you just kind of keep going with it, and hopefully get your--you see smiles on your employees faces, and that's your validation. But, this is a community validation; it was neat.