Our History
Since 1980, Dudek has grown from a two-person, Southern California-focused engineering firm to a 700-person, national, multidisciplinary environmental, planning, engineering firm. Our history includes projects in all 50 states and Dudek is ranked as one of the Top 105 U.S. Environmental Firms (Engineering News-Record, 2022).
Frank Dudek, Founder
“From my 41 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 in 2000. 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 record financial growth. My feeling of opportunity has only grown as we have achieved 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
Cool Timeline
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.
The firm launches its construction management practice focused on Southern California developments and infrastructure.
The District Management practice is launched, widening the scope of services offered to our water district clients.
The Environmental practice is launched to help clients navigate projects through California’s complex environmental regulatory permitting and documentation processes.
Dudek’s hydrogeology practice is launched to tackle projects requiring the extraction and treatment of contaminated groundwater/soils and recharge of water/treated wastewater.
Dudek opens its first regional office in Santa Barbara, expanding into California’s Central Coast, with a focus on local development and permitting.
Dudek moves into Palm Desert, California to focus on civil engineering and habitat conservation planning throughout the vast and diverse Coachella Valley.
HRS (Habitat Restoration Sciences), our habitat restoration construction subsidiary is founded, branching out from and complementing our habitat restoration design practice.
Dudek moves into Northern California with an office in Auburn focused on preserving and planning for the Sierra foothills and surrounding regions.
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.
The firm goes west, expanding into Hawai’i to establish our aerial surveying practice (now Mapping and Surveying).
Dudek adds a Portland office to serve as a base for the multifaceted needs of our Pacific Northwest clients.
The firm transitions leadership for the first time with the appointment of Joe Monaco, AICP, who serves as President and CEO.
Dudek crosses the nation, opening our first eastern office in Lake Worth Beach, Florida to service our renewable energy clients.
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.
The firm opens an office in Denver, Colorado to further service clients in the Mountain West and beyond.
Environmental Division Leader Eric Wilson is named Executive Vice President as part of a long-planned leadership succession process put in place to ensure the continuing viability and sustainability of the firm’s culture and growth strategy.