Ulteig Engineers is Engineering Growth

By 2005, the top managers of Ulteig Engineers realized that their own firm needed some re-engineering.

The Fargo-based firm—which handles a wide range of engineering services, primarily energy and general civil engineering—had five offices in the Upper Midwest, including a Minneapolis location. But in the early part of the decade, the firm was noticing problems that kept it from taking advantage of new opportunities. Very simply, the branch offices weren’t working together and weren’t using each other’s expertise.

Reorganization typically means reducing head count. Not at Ulteig. Employee numbers have risen from 250 in 2004 to 440 currently; the company expects to double that again in the next five years. Revenues have nearly tripled this decade, from $15 million in 2000 to $42 million last year. Ulteig rose to 291 nationally in terms of revenue on Engineering News-Record’s list of top 500 firms in 2009—up from 326 last year.

“You can’t grow a company unless you have the internal structure in the company to allow for the growth,” says Gerry Floden, the firm’s CEO and president. Starting in 2005, that structure is what Ulteig proceeded to build for itself.

The Way the Wind Blows

Ulteig Engineers’ roots are in energy and government work; about half of the firm’s total revenue still comes from government contracts. Founded in Fargo in 1944 as an electrical engineering firm by Melvin Ulteig, the company got its start by bringing power to farmsteads in the Upper Midwest. In the 1930s, more than 5 million windmills were operating in the country. These windmills connected to electrical generators to provide household electricity throughout rural America.

The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 brought electricity for the first time to many farmsteads. Before its passage, only 10 percent of American farms had electricity. By 1950, about 90 percent did. In helping to bring electricity to the rural Upper Midwest, Ulteig completed more than 35,000 miles of distribution lines to households and approximately 600 miles of transmission lines.

In the 1960s, the Ulteig firm expanded into defense projects. Its portfolio included the ballistic missile defense site in Grand Forks, North Dakota, established during the buildup of nuclear missiles in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. (The U.S. dismantled the site in 1976.) Though it has become a smaller part of its repertoire, Ulteig still performs defense work, primarily construction related, for National Guard and Air Force bases.