Reflections from our Leaders
Frank Dudek, Chairman of the Board
“From the first 40 years as founder and leader at Dudek, I have three basic takeaways. First, experiencing tremendous satisfaction in helping build a successful, sustainable, and growing consulting firm throughout California—and now well beyond. Second, achieving an early goal I set for myself: to assemble such a diverse and competent management and professional staff that it renders its founder non-essential to the continued success of the firm. And third, accomplishing this with a simple management philosophy: to provide unwavering trust and support, along with meaningful rewards and opportunity for ownership, with minimal bureaucracy.”
Joe Monaco, President and CEO
“I joined Dudek 20 years ago, mid-way through our firm’s journey thus far. What I remember most clearly from those early days is a feeling of opportunity—but also, that we had a lot of work ahead of us to reach our aspirational goals! I never would have imagined back then that we would have achieved so much today: a nationwide presence, successful ownership and leadership transitions, a robust corporate culture that reflects our strong core values, and financial growth to a record and milestone level of $100M in gross revenue.
Reflecting on our 40th anniversary, my feeling of opportunity has only grown and now encompasses the retrospective and the prospective. We have seen great success by identifying and leveraging opportunities throughout the years. By doing so, we continue to create more and better opportunities to work on interesting projects, to develop our careers, to be an industry leader, and to have fun doing it.”
Dudek through the Decades
Dudek History

1980
Dudek opens its doors in downtown Encinitas, California as a small civil engineering consulting practice working for municipal wastewater agencies and private land developers in San Diego County.
1985
The firm launches its construction management practice focused on Southern California developments and infrastructure.
1986
The District Management practice is launched, widening the scope of services offered to our water district clients.
1990
The Environmental practice is launched to help clients navigate projects through California’s complex environmental regulatory permitting and documentation processes.
1992
Dudek’s hydrogeology practice is launched to tackle projects requiring the extraction and treatment of contaminated groundwater/soils and recharge of water/treated wastewater.
1995
Dudek opens its first regional office in Santa Barbara, expanding into California’s Central Coast, with a focus on local development and permitting.
1996
Office is established in Orange, California, expanding our geographic reach for water district and city clients.
1997
50 Dudekians work in 3 offices across California.
Dudek moves into Palm Desert, California to focus on civil engineering and habitat conservation planning throughout the vast and diverse Coachella Valley.
2000
100 Dudekians work in 3 offices across California.
2003
The firm creates an ESOP to protect and further develop employee ownership.
2004
HRS (Habitat Restoration Sciences), our habitat restoration construction subsidiary is founded, branching out from and complementing our habitat restoration design practice.
2006
Dudek moves into Northern California with an office in Auburn focused on preserving and planning for the Sierra foothills and surrounding regions.
2007
200 Dudekians work in 5 offices across California.
2010
Sacramento office opens adding planning and environmental regulatory experts proximate to our state agency clients.
2013
The firm opens two Bay Area offices in Larkspur and San Francisco to service a diverse set of clients spread geographically around the Bay.
Dudek establishes Pasadena office, positioning the firm to service Los Angeles County clients on large infrastructure and planning projects.
300 Dudekians work in 8 offices across California.
2016
The firm goes west, expanding into Hawai’i to establish our UAS (drone survey) practice.
Dudek widens its Central Coast presence with the opening of an office in Santa Cruz focused on local agency and statewide education system clients.
Dudek adds a Portland office to serve as a base for the multifaceted needs of our Pacific Northwest clients.
2017
Dudek’s Bay Area presence continues to evolve to suit the needs of city and agency clients around the bay, consolidating into a single office in downtown Oakland, California.
400 Dudekians work in 12 offices in California, Oregon, and Hawaiʻi.
2018
500 Dudekians work in 12 offices across the western United States.
2019
The firm opens an office in Bakersfield to service Central Valley clients.
Dudek crosses the nation, opening our first eastern office in Lake Worth Beach, Florida to service our renewable energy clients.
An office in San Diego proper is established in close proximity to some of our biggest and oldest hometown clients.
2020
Dudek establishes an office in downtown Norfolk, Virginia to serve our ever expanding energy clients as they work to meet new and growing renewable portfolio standards.
- Dudek serves clients in every resource and infrastructure-related sector
- Our team consists of 15 major practice groups
- Our 600+ employees work in 16 offices nationwide
- Our projects span more than 40 states