Month: August 2013

Sold:  Family Dollar Store / 3002 Cypress Street

Engineering firm grows WM location

Ford, Bacon and Davis has doubled local workforce

By
Greg Hilburn

[email protected]

International engineering firm Ford, Bacon & Davis barely finished a
50-job expansion at its West Monroe headquarters before announcing yet another
one this summer.

Michael Cruse, a senior vice president based in Greenville, S.C., said the
company is recruiting 25 more engineers, project managers, designers and
project support personnel to its operation in Richland Tower.

“We’ve almost doubled our workforce since we announced our last expansion
last fall,” said Cruse, who is a University of Louisiana at Monroe graduate.

Ford, Bacon and Davis moved to the five-floor Richland Tower in 2012,
leasing two full floors and expanding the parking lot. It has since leased a
third floor and part of a fourth.

“It gives us room for 175 people, and if we do some reconfiguring of space I
believe we could end up with 200 sometime next year,” he said. “At that point
we may have to look for more space somewhere else, but that would be a good
problem because it would mean our business growth remains strong.”

Cruse, who began his career with the firm in Monroe in 1979, said the
company continues to see significant growth in its power, renewable energy,
industrial power, specialty chemical and pulp and paper sectors.

“Personnel in the West Monroe location are supporting projects from
California to Florida,” he said. “Our clients are spending more capital.”

He said the company’s Richland Tower location has “helped revitalize our
business here. Our clients like the location and it’s helped us recruit
talent,” he said.

Cruse said the firm prefers hiring local talent, “but the pool of applicants
from the market has been minimal, so we’re having to bring people in from
outside the area,” he said. “We’re working with the local universities to try
to find as much local talent as possible.”

Ford, Bacon & Davis has a long history in the market, opening its first
local office in Monroe in 1931.

The firm once moved its world headquarters here briefly to Jackson Street in
Monroe, where it employed as many as 600 in the 1980s.

Ford, Bacon & Davis downsized its local staff in the 1990s, but had
continued to maintain a minimum workforce until beginning a series of
expansions in 2011.

Sold: Vacant land next to Basic / Home Depot center