Bolder and Brighter: Wood Harbinger Celebrates 50 Years
Wood Harbinger marked our 50th Anniversary with a celebration for staff and clients on Friday, October 27th in our office.
Wood Harbinger celebrates 50 years with a party in our new office in Bellevue’s 929 Tower.
Honoring Our Past
In 1967, our founder Steve Wood opened up an office in his home in Lynwood and began offering mechanical engineering services. In 1971, the firm was incorporated as Wood and Associates and moved into a Seattle office on Eastlake Avenue East. Steve was considered a bit of a maverick among his peers at the time. He had a passion for technical excellence and took bold risks pursuing complex projects and solving tough engineering challenges.
In 1980, Wood and Associates merged with Harbinger Corporation, a firm with roots in industrial facilities like fuel storage and steam generation. With this merger, the firm became Wood/Harbinger, Inc. and grew our services in utility infrastructure and engineering for manufacturing plants.
Steve retired in 1990. The firm presidents that followed him—Lyle Matznick, Jerry Williams, and Bob Axley— nurtured Steve’s vision and continued to shape the firm on a foundation of strong technical engineering, innovation, and taking risks.
In 1997, Bruce Pitts founded the commissioning group as a dedicated service built around using engineering to make buildings work better. Bruce has the unique distinction of having been with Wood Harbinger the longest—43 of our 50 years. In 2000, Bruce Alward joined the firm and grew our electrical engineering group into the strong team it is today.
Wood Harbinger staff, retired principals, and clients enjoyed lively conversation throughout the evening.
Celebrating the Future
The theme of this company has always been sound engineering delivered at the highest quality. We’ve been the team that clients have sought out to solve problems that no one else could, and we’ve done that with the some of the most brilliant engineers in the area with a focus on delivering quality documents and putting the client first.
2017 has marked some exciting growth for the firm. We moved into a new office space in downtown Bellevue’s LEED Gold 929 building. Our space was designed around fostering innovation and collaboration. This year we joined together and formed a business alliance with our long-time friends, Notkin Mechanical Engineers, to create Notkin Wood Harbinger Alliance. Together we bring a powerful and experienced talent base that can take on any project, no matter the size and complexity.
As we move into the future, we’re centering our focus on being creative and innovative problem solvers, generating big ideas, and following through with quality design delivery and commissioning. It is this value of the big picture that we have delivered for our clients over the past 50 years. We plan to be bringing you this value of innovation, creativity, and quality for another 50 years or more.
President/CEO Tom Leonidas and Principal Bruce Pitts (who has been with the firm 43 of our 50 years) share stories and a toast to the firm. Cheers!!!