North Carolina Construction News special feature
CENTEC Engineering, PLLC has expanded to Denver NC with the ability to provide comprehensive civil site development engineering, while keeping costs and overheads under control – important in the current rapidly changing environment with the COVID-19 virus challenging the economy.
The company can keep costs down while still providing timely, accurate service because it embraces technology and modern, efficient ways of conducting business, says CENTEC owner Joe Sulesky.
As a civil engineering firm, CENTEC specializes in civil site development engineering, and also offers a wide variety of other services including solid waste engineering, storm water permitting, and construction monitoring for residential, industrial and commercial sites.
With more than 30 years in the industry, the company has vast experience designing roads, parking lots, drainage structures and utilities (including water and sewer, gas, and electrical).
CENTEC’s site development work includes developing construction plans and specifications for either negotiated (design-build) work or work that will be bid out to contractors.
“I have a new school business model. The old school business model was where you had to have receptionists and secretaries and in-house accountants and all these types of people in these overhead positions. And that was true 30 or 40 years ago, but now with technology and how quickly things can get done, you don’t need all the overhead. So we’re very streamlined.”
Being streamlined means CENTEC is able to keep its costs down and its budgets tight, all to the benefit of its customers.
Even though it’s a small and nimble company, CENTEC has worked on projects of all scopes and sizes. Some of the larger ones involved overall budgets of $20 million and 250-acre sites. Some of the smaller ones involved as little as half-acre office sites.
Based in Beckley, West Virginia, CENTEC has worked on sites in Maryland and throughout Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.
“We’re experienced dealing with a wide variety of government agencies—local, state and federal—the agencies that regulate this type of work,” says Sulesky.
He adds that it makes sense for CENTEC to be part of the region’s construction community.
“The area around Denver is a hotbed of development. There is so much growth,” says Sulesky explaining that Lake Norman and Duke Power Company are two of the reasons why the area is so attractive to developers.
“There’s an enormous amount of development around Lake Norman, and Denver is this fairly small, still fairly rural town on the western side of Lake Norman. Development started on the eastern side of the lake and it’s moving along the north side and the south side and it’s going to come along to the west side where Denver is, so Denver is centrally located within all this development.”
As the owner, Sulesky is putting his name out to potential partners and clients as a testament to CENTEC’s commitment to customer service and quality.
“I’m the face of the company. I own the company. I’m involved in all the decisions, so there’s no hierarchy of people that a potential client is dealing with that doesn’t have ownership in the company.”