Timmons Group has worked with clients in the Hampton Roads area from our office based in Virginia Beach since 2006. Now, we’re excited to accelerate our responsiveness to clients and community members with a new office in the Oyster Point business development in Newport News.
I caught up with Dan Ruby, a senior project manager who has been with Timmons Group since 2014. He is joining the Newport News based office as the company’s civil engineering lead from his previous role in our Virginia Beach office.
Dan gave me a history of his role with Timmons Group and what he hopes to offer clients through the new office. Though he’s a civil engineer by trade now, his background in architecture is what catapulted him into an appreciation for civil engineering.
“My undergraduate degree is in architecture from the University of Maryland,” Dan says. “I worked for a few years in architecture and got the lay of the land in consulting, but eventually decided that civil engineering was a better fit for me. So, then I got my Master’s in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. I have been working in Hampton Roads for about 19 years, the past 7 of which have been with Timmons Group,” Dan told me.
In his role as a senior project manager, Dan works with a variety of purposes in mind, including project management, engineering, and business development. “The engineering and project management component is based in ensuring that we are producing sound designs for our clients. At the same time, I’m invested in the marketing and business development side of things. Finding out how we can best serve our clients and making sure we’re positioned well to react to their needs is my goal,” he says.
I got a glimpse of what Dan’s day-to-day looks like when we met at the new office. He took phone calls with his project production team, emailed with clients, and then took me to two local Timmons Group project sites so I could see some works in progress. We visited the York County Library expansion and the new Virginia Tech Seafood Lab in downtown Hampton.
He answered questions we had about new stormwater piping that was being installed and how the site was being prepared for a new parking lot, both features that his team helped develop in the site design of the new library. When we visited the seafood lab, he explained to me how the facility is designed to withdraw raw water from the Hampton River to naturally supply the experiments so that scientists can study sea life outside of the river.
Dan says his team is very collaborative and community oriented. While he started off in the Virginia Beach office, he’s looking forward to being part of the team leading the engineering effort in the new Newport News office. He is excited to serve clients with additional responsiveness from the other side of town.
“Knowing how quickly we were able to grow the Virginia Beach office gives us insight for the Newport News office. In the past seven years, we added landscape architecture, water/wastewater, and survey to our Virginia Beach office, so knowing that we have all those resources right down the road is going to be beneficial to the growth of this office too,” he says. Alongside the new office’s civil engineering and land survey offerings, the team is also quickly establishing a drone survey crew, having just welcomed seasoned LiDAR drone pilot David Barton.
Dan says that whatever could occur on the civil side of things can easily be supported by our subject-matter experts from across the region. “We have a lot of folks with expertise in practically every civil engineering service that are only a phone call away to help provide solutions to our clients.”
Dan’s face lit up when I asked him about working with his team. He truly believes in his colleagues and the work that they’re capable of. “The folks that we’ve got are truly top notch,” Dan says. “Technically, personally, and professionally. The thing I appreciate most is knowing that when we’re working on a project, we can count on everyone to produce high quality work. I trust that the decisions my teams make are sound and that we can have ongoing discussions to work through designs and challenges that might pop up.”
Aside from producing good work, Dan says the Hampton Roads Timmons Group team members are just good people. “They’re good folks that you really enjoy working with. We’re not coworkers as much as we really are trusted colleagues and friends. It’s just how we do things here,” Dan says.
Dan told me that anyone can reach out with him directly by email or on LinkedIn to inquire about professional opportunities. “The opportunities that we’ve got here to grow a practice with new employees and clients are incredible. The relationships are the name of the game,” he says.
You can catch our full interview on LinkedIn at the Newport News office here.
