Carter & Burgess Grows Fayetteville Office

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Carter & Burgess Inc. was the fastest growing company on the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s annual list of Largest Architecture & Engineering firms.
The Fayetteville firm increased its local staff by 37.5 percent by offering a one-stop shop for client’s needs, said area manager Kip Guthrie. It boasts a wide variety of services, including transportation programs, facilities, retail and distribution, land development, public works, urban design and planning, acoustic, surveying and environmental, to name a few.
“We are licensed to practice architecture in Arkansas, but choose not to because so many of our clients are architects,” Guthrie said. “We don’t want to compete with our clients in any way.”
Carter & Burgess is a national firm with more than 3,100 employees and annual revenue of $495 million nationwide. The company is among the top 31 in 16 different categories in the Engineering News Record’s rankings.
“We can bring a fresh perspective to Northwest Arkansas,” Guthrie said. “We have so many offices in so many communities, some that are growing even faster than Northwest Arkansas, that whatever our area is experiencing, we have a staff that has experienced it before.”
There were two changes the top of the list, which is ranked by the number local staffers.
In fact, the main difference was Bates & Associates replacing Blew Bates & Associates in the No. 10 spot. The two principals, Buckley Blew and Geoff Bates, formed separate companies on Nov. 1. Both said there were no hard feelings and that the move “worked best for both of us.”
Another change was because of a fall merger that resulted in the addition of the name “Sparks” to Crafton Tull Sparks & Associates Inc.
Besides the two new companies formed by the Blew Bates split, there are three new firms on this year’s list: Presley Brannan and Associates Inc., H2 Engineering Inc. and ARMac Consulting Engineers PLLC, which is owned by Dixie Development founder and CEO Ben Israel.
Only 14 of the 40 companies polled for a second year in a row experienced a decline in number of local employees. Two companies dropped below the employment cut off this year.