Baton Rouge-based civil engineering firm SJB Group has added to its land surveying services a new subsurface utility engineering line, a move company officials say will help the firm continue to grow in the Capital Region.
“Extending our service line was the next step in growing SJB Group,” says President Wilfred Barry. “It is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”
By adding the new service line, SJB will no longer have to subcontract with other firms when it needs to locate an underground utility line. That will not only save SJB time and money, but also its clients.
“This new division is going to give us the ability to determine ourselves the true location of utilities,” explains Ken Gaspard, senior project manager. “Right now a lot of companies have to do a lot of change orders on their construction projects because they’re really not aware of the exact subsurface utility locations, and then when they get to digging they find something they didn’t anticipate, which can stop a project and lead to costly change orders. So, they’re looking at this as a plus, too.”
SJB has been working for about a year to add the service line. New equipment has been purchased and three employees have received certification for subsurface utility engineering via Staking University in the Chicago area, a speciality school that provides certification for more than 400 utilities, municipalities and private organizations across the country.
In October, the company also purchased a 13,000-square-foot warehouse building about a mile from its Picardy Avenue headquarters to accommodate its expanded surveying department. The new line brings to six the total number of services offered by SJB, which also specializes in engineering, construction, land surveying, site development and real estate services to commercial, industrial, institutional and municipal clients through the Southeastern U.S.
“In the future, we predict that it could possibly double the amount of revenue that we’re bringing in for the service division,” says Karen Kuehn, SJB project control specialist. —Steve Sanoski
