Dave Linton is the Vice President | Principal | Department Manager. He brings more than 30 years of innovative engineering experience to design and construction projects for public and educational facilities, libraries, office buildings, historic structures, commercial buildings, churches, residential structures, and recreational facilities. Since he founded the firm in 2003, he has served as the engineer of record on thousands of projects across the Metropolitan Washington, DC region and beyond.

Stephanie Linton, Dave's devoted wife of 21 years, played a pivotal role in the establishment of the firm. As an integral part of Linton Engineering, she serves as the firm's office manager, ensuring seamless operations. Together, they are the proud parents of three sons.

What were your goals when you started the firm?

I really thought that there was a better more client focused way to run an engineering firm. Both in terms of the product in the attention to detail, the level of completeness and in the Client responsiveness. I thought that if this could be achieved on a consistent basis, everything else would take care of itself.

What was your thought process when you decided to go out on your own?

I didn’t really start out with a dream of starting my own firm. In a lot of ways, it was the best option available to me when I reached the point at my previous firm when I knew that my future was not there. I talked a lot with my family and decided that it was worth the risk with a “nothing ventured, nothing gained” approach to it.

What was it like in the beginning when you were first getting started?

Exciting, humbling, crazy. A lot of ups and downs. Stephanie and I have a shared memory of us stuffing envelopes for our monthly invoicing during that first year upstairs on the floor of our guest bedroom at 10:00 pm. She had a full-time job and the health insurance benefits at that point in time in addition to being my office manager and financial person.

Has this been what you hoped to achieve?

I really thought initially that this would end up like the team that was supervising at my previous firm. Myself, two to three engineers and a drafting technician. I didn’t envision that the firm would reach the size it is today. This all happened gradually with several important milestones occurring along the way.

What was your biggest struggle?

Building the company. It’s great to have a vision of what I wanted to do and what I wanted the firm to be about and it’s a critical first step in the process but to actually implement this is a huge challenge. I was fortunate in that I was essentially operating a small business within the previous firm where I worked and had a lot of the same responsibilities that I would have as a business owner. However, being a start-up, the need to attract and retain talented like-minded staff members and get previous clients to move to an unproven new startup firm was a big challenge.

What do you like best about running a firm?

Being able to fix things that are not working. We don’t have to get it right the first time, but we do have to recognize when something’s not working and make changes when needed. I also really like that we have a system in place where the employees are empowered to identify what isn’t working and be a part of the solution process in improving things.

On a day-to-day basis, my favorite task is having a “white board” discussion with one of the engineers to solve a technical problem that developed on one of the current projects.

How did the 2008-10 recession impact the firm?

I was very fortunate in that we were somewhat established when this started. We had a solid 4-years to build a client base when it hit, and it was convenient that we were not very large at the time. As a firm, this enabled us to be nimble and adapt to what was occurring during that time since our overhead cost was so small. We were able to retain all our staff members without reducing our work hours or salaries, which was my primary hope. We had a couple of large academic projects that continued through that time that really helped us stay afloat.

One good thing that came about for us is that we took this time to teach ourselves REVit since we not fully busy which really paid dividends for us down the road.

What was the timeline like for the growth of the firm?

Up until the recession, I think we hired someone once every 6-months. I started out with several contract employees who initially were moonlighting, and we moved on from there. One of my biggest goals was to do large scale academic work. It took a long time to break back into that field even though I had done a lot of that work in my career. It was a slow process but eventually we got there and that propelled a lot of the growth that firm has experienced.

Were there any defining moments?

There are several but one of the best early decisions I made was to hire Robert Schottler in 2008. Currently the Senior Associate Structural Engineer for the firm, he’s been my right arm through the development of the firm. We care about a lot of the same things and work in a similar way.

There were multiple key projects along the way that gave the firm access to more and larger projects in both the academic and residential markets. Several of these projects won AIA awards. Another key moment came when had our first opportunity to engineer a new ground up high school in Loudon County. That had become one of the firm’s goals once we got past our startup phase.

What was your biggest success?

I’ve haven’t really given that much thought. As a faith-based person my primary answer to that has little to do with my work life accomplishments. It has more to do with whether I have made a positive difference in the lives of the people that I’ve interacted with at work and even more importantly with my family. I need to be successful first as a husband, father, and son before I can think about being successful anywhere else.

How has the industry changed over the years?

The two areas that stand out the most are how BIM has become such a big part of the A/E industry and in the development and scope increase of custom, single-family residence work.

For BIM, there’s been a dramatic shift in the product that a structural engineering company must now produce. An integrated multi-discipline model is a must and there are skill sets that every office must now have. We have some very highly skilled staff members who have developed our office templates and procedures for this work.

The residential design industry has also evolved greatly over the years. Single family residential work used to be very prescriptive in nature using lookup tables, requiring little to no involvement from a structural engineer. Now, the code requirements and associated permit requirements have become very sophisticated requiring a great deal of skill to successfully navigate the process. A whole design industry has developed that didn’t really exist 20 years ago.

What are some key highlights you can share about the firm over the years?

It’s hard to narrow this down. Everything has built upon itself with incremental steps. As mentioned previously, the first ground up high school was a big achievement for us. It also took us a long time and a lot of effort to get awarded our first stick over podium job. It’s hard to look back and see any huge defining moments. I think about it more from the perspective of how the clients that have hung in there with us over the years even though not every project has not been an engineering masterpiece.

What has been your favorite project or category of projects?

I’ve always really enjoyed both custom residential and academic work. I think this is because these projects will both be personally utilized by the clients, so it sets up a high priority for quality in the design that doesn’t always transfer into other project types. I prefer working on projects where we have a greater opportunity to do our best work rather than being mostly schedule driven.

What is the silliest thing you’ve done at the firm?

That would probably be the late-night pizza and Age of Conqueror’s gaming nights that we’ve had at the office periodically over the years. My sons are excellent players of the game and got me interested in it years ago. It was originally a way to stay connected with them during their teenage years, but it’s lived on well beyond that. We’ve had many staff members participate over the years and several former staff members still participate.

What’s next for Linton Engineering?

We’re far from done. I’m excited about the items that we’re tackling together in our monthly residential and commercial design team meetings. I feel that this is helping us progress as a firm, and I like it even more that I’m not leading this effort. It’s all staff driven.

We’ve done a lot of hard firm maintenance work over the last couple of years as our staff identified company problems in our bi-annual visioning meetings and we’re starting to see those efforts pay off for us. Now we are fine tuning what we are doing rather than blowing it up and starting over.

What are some life lessons you have learned?

Seems like this is where I should say something about work life balance. It’s been very helpful to me that my wife Stephanie has also been my office manager and sees firsthand what I need to do and is supportive of that. There have been times when work has had to come first. There are personal sacrifices that must be made when you own your business. I knew that going in.

I’ve learned that for me personally exercise is the best way to relieve work stress and it’s also a healthy hobby.

Another lesson would be that I must trust the staff. Things might not occur or be accomplished in the way I had anticipated, but in many cases the result is better than what I could have done myself. Delegation is hard but it’s also absolutely essential.

What is the future of Linton Engineering? 

The continuity of what we’ve achieved is very important to me. I believe that what we’ve done to date and where we are as a firm is unique and special. I will not be willing to begin to walk away from the firm until I know that this continuity is in place. We’ve all worked too hard to get where we are today to have it go away.

What are some of your personal goals?

Once I feel comfortable that the firm will continue without me, I look forward to starting the next chapter. Stephanie and I would really like to do some travelling. There’s so much of the country and the world that I haven’t seen yet. I want to see a baseball game in each major league stadium with my two adult sons.

I want to hike the Appalachian Trail with my youngest son. (Not all at one time.). I’d like to turn engineering into a hobby rather than a vocation. If I get the chance to teach engineering in some way, I think that’s something that I would be good at and enjoy. I’d also be interested in engineering my own retirement house. Seems like a great way to finish my career.