Founded in Richmond in 1953, Timmons Group is taking the Mid-Atlantic region by coastal storm. We’ve established offices in Virginia Beach, Newport News, and Elizabeth City throughout the years. And now, we’re excited to offer local services to our Wilmington clients from an office in the land of palm trees and waterways, just minutes from the sandy shores of Wrightsville Beach.
As our coastal footprint has grown, we’ve adjusted our regional office structure to better suit our clients’ needs. Our new office is situated in the center of Eastwood Road, a main artery of Wilmington’s city layout, and within a 15-minute drive of nearly every corner of the city. What better way to introduce a new office than to highlight its quickly growing staff?
One thing our newest team members in Wilmington have in common is their investment in the local culture, natural environments, and sustainable development of the region they reside in. To get a better insight into their environmentally forward mindsets, I sat down with the team to chat about their goals for designing future Wilmington-based projects. So, let’s meet the team!
Meet John Wall. John is the senior project engineer heading up the newly established Wilmington office. He’s an avid beachgoer, passionate mentor, and “pretty good” skimboarder. John has been with the firm since 2015 where he started as a project engineer in our Prince George commercial land development practice near Petersburg, Virginia.
While the Wilmington culture has helped him ease into life a little, he doesn’t plan on slowing down the office’s growth anytime soon. “We’re focused and we’re ready to grow our team and our commitments to our clients. We have a lot of work in Brunswick County and Oak Island, and we’re gearing up for whatever projects comes through our doors next.”
When I visited the new office, I was elated to travel to Wilmington as an adult for the first time. My family used to visit Topsail Island when I was little, so I didn’t have much memorable reference of the vicinity. But goodness, has the landscape changed from what I can recall! As I approached the coast, I noticed an increase of protected areas and wetlands, so naturally, I had to ask John how that would impact the work our team is doing in the region.
“Wetlands are spread throughout the state, especially on the coast,” he told me. “It’s important for us to design with environmental impact in mind everywhere, but it’s really significant to the culture in Wilmington. We have beaches and we care about our trees, so we take our impact seriously,” he continued.
John says one of his favorite parts of heading up the office is the opportunity to help younger engineers grow with him. “The work I do every day is fulfilling. Not only do we get to see actual families living in the homes that we helped design and people use roadways that we engineer, but I get to mentor the team that is doing all these awesome things. My favorite part of my job is helping the team grow from their experiences and passing on my knowledge of how to engineer our projects responsibly to the next generation of Timmons Group engineers.”
John says he’s excited for the weather to warm up and to take his team out for bonding experiences so they can continue to grow together. He’s hoping they’ll go skimboarding with him at Wrightsville Beach. If not, a casual drink at Dockside will do!
Meet Grayson Morgan. Grayson, like Ed, made the transition from our Raleigh office to start up our Wilmington practice, having been with the firm since 2019. He went to school for business at George Mason University where he ran track during his undergraduate program. Now, he’s excelling in residential civil design.
Grayson’s career began at Timmons Group where he began a career with the land surveying team in the office. He is an AutoCAD aficionado and supports the Wilmington team with a plethora of design program needs. At first, his career pointed him in the direction of survey, but after he showed an interest in the design side of the industry, he joined the residential land development team.
“I design a lot for stormwater and I really like it. I work on ponds, parking lots, neighborhoods, you name it. I get to thinking about my projects when I design them, like, ‘How can these storm drains be more functional for residents?’ and ‘Where is the water going once it leaves the pond?’ I just like water and I like to understand where it goes,” Grayson said.
That logical and thoughtful mindset is what propelled Grayson to his career in civil design. “Engineering is where we design everything so it interacts the way it should given how our society is growing,” he said. “The goal is to help water function the way it was meant to, and that includes tides at beaches, stormwater on roadways, riverbeds, and more. When hurricanes come through, we have to be prepared for the surges so they are less likely to affect neighborhoods and businesses. We do everything we can to keep runoff water away from roads and out of our local waterways,” Grayson continued.
Being that invested in water and its impact on the community doesn’t go without a price. Grayson also spends his free time at the beach with his wife where they appreciate the benefits of living in an environmentally conscious and clean city.
Meet Brittney Hanson. Brittney is a transportation engineer in the new office. She has professional experience in Virginia and Maryland with aspects of roadway engineering, including geometric, erosion and sediment control, and stormwater design, and she is quickly adding North Carolina-based design to her repertoire. Her roles have lent her experience ranging from working with the site development teams on needed roadway improvements, to working on standalone projects with local municipalities and state departments.
She told me she doesn’t have a particularly favorite kind of project to work on, but Brittney does enjoy working on smaller projects. “I enjoy more intimate projects because I feel like I can be really involved in them, from conception to final design. I get invested and then I can fulfill the client’s needs and work with them all the way through the project,” she said.
On arriving in Wilmington, one of the first things I noticed were turn lanes that incorporate medians for traffic flow. I haven’t seen many of these, and when I learned that Brittney was a roadway engineer, I immediately asked for her thoughts.
“I have seen so many near-accidents happen on four lane roadways where the center median, used as a two-way left turn lane, doesn’t function properly with the increase in traffic and distracted driving. I was so glad to see that Wilmington instated these throughout the city. We want transportation to be intuitive. Stop lights or stop signs with separated turn lanes do this, but when there isn’t a stop-controlled intersection, those medians are really helpful to create a safe channel for traffic to flow through,” Brittney said. “My goal is always to enhance the safety of our shared transportation systems, so it’s exciting to see that forethought in my new home. I want to continue that here,” she continued.
Brittney moved to Wilmington from the Washington, D.C. area. She was certain to tell me that she has thoroughly enjoyed the transition from city life to a slower culture in Wilmington. “I really have time to process and be present in what I’m doing here at work and also at home.”
Meet Ed Jordal. Ed is a Professional Licensed Surveyor who originated from our Timmons Group Raleigh survey practice. He moved to Wilmington with the growth of the new office where he and his wife are welcoming a change of pace at the beach. While they await the renovations on their home, Ed is busy heading up the land surveying practice.
Ed is excited to bring on new additions to his practice in Wilmington soon, but in the meantime, he’s had several months to plant successful seeds with clients in the area. “Our engineers are doing a fantastic job of taking on new projects and incorporating our surveying services into them. It’s great to work in-house with folks I know I can trust and that makes it so much easier and more effective to produce a great product for our clients,” he said.
He speaks highly of his teammates at the office and looks forward to introducing new members to the team in the coming months. “John has really stepped into his role as the office lead and Grayson is a wonderful mentor. Brittany is bringing her traffic expertise and Jenna is a team player. It’s a wonderful group and I am excited for the next steps we take together. The balance is great,” Ed told me.
“Timmons Group offers a fantastic package to make sure our employees are taken care of. The opportunity to come to Wilmington was obvious for me. I get to continue our land surveying practice, work with a great group of folks, and have benefits that suit my family’s needs.”
“It feels like a tremendous opportunity for all of us, and I couldn’t be happier to be part of the team,” he said. “And what’s more, I get to live at the beach!”
Meet Jenna Pavela. Jenna is a Wisconsin-native-turned-Wilmington-adorer. She’s been awaiting the opportunity to live in North Carolina since she was little, and she couldn’t be more ecstatic to begin her engineering career at Timmons Group in Wilmington.
“I originally found biological systems engineering at University of Wisconsin Madison,” Jenna began. “There were only eight of us in the program, so it was pretty tight knit. I worked closely with my professor, and he set me up for success as I moved into a full-time engineering job here. I was really meant to live here I think,” she told me. Jenna was a teaching assistant in school and has quickly adapted those experiences to suit her new position at the firm.
Jenna’s day-to-day is quick moving, and that’s the way she likes it. “John will sit us down as a group each Monday morning and we’ll discuss the projects we have going on. We break them down and figure out the best order to work on them, and sometimes that changes because we evolve to meet our clients’ needs, but it’s really exciting to see how much we are accomplishing as a team.”
The team is currently working on some residential projects that Jenna has enjoyed. “I really like working on the large subdivision projects,” she said. “I love having a big project to focus on with lots of moving parts. It’s really satisfying!”
Another facet of Jenna’s excitement is being a younger member of the team. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity for growth with our group here, particularly because I’m young. I have the opportunity to learn and continue to move up as we bring more people on. One of the best parts by far is getting to learn as I go.”
Environmental stewardship is not a trend in Wilmington, it’s a lifestyle that defines us as neighbors. Timmons Group is committed to the belief that no matter the size of a high school football field, stormwater rehabilitation project, or offshore wind farm, our impact on the world is much more than what happens behind our office doors. That’s why as engineers and designers, this team is building environmental stewardship into the work they do every day while shaping the face of the Earth.
So, now that you’ve met the team… Come work with us! Reach out to John about how we can support your new or existing project or our HR team if you’re a fit for any of our open positions. We’d love to hear from you! Are you ready to engineer responsibly?
