Richard Aldridge, PE
Branch Manager
Wow, time really flies when you are engineering away doesn’t it? Richard Aldridge, PE, has officially been with Civiltec for five years now! During this time what has his experience been like serving as the Prescott Branch Manager?
As a branch manager, how would you describe how you run your office?
We have a very interactive office environment that allows for the sharing of design concepts, receiving input from everyone, and great camaraderie. I have been truly blessed with a wonderful crew!
What is a goal of yours for the next year?
Fade into oblivion! At my advanced age, I am looking forward to retirement at the end of 2023 and spending time in my workshop. My wife Jenn and I also want to spend time traveling a bit.
As a project manager, how do you decide which projects to take on? What is your process?
With agency work as approximately 95% of our workload, the projects just continue to come to us from our existing and new agency clients. With our public works backlog, we can be very selective about any private development work that we might take on.
What made you decide to pursue engineering?
I started out wanting to be an architect since I had a talent for hand drafting back in the pre-CADD days when we used clay tablets and a stylus to do our plans. What really convinced me to become a Civil Engineer was when I was working before college in the print room shop for Bechtle Power Corporation in Arizona (1977) on a power plant in St, Johns, AZ. This one group of engineers would get up from their desks every once in a while and go out into the job site. Then they would all come back and chill at their desks again. I asked the other engineers in the office who those guys were and they said they were Civil Engineers. That’s all it took!
What has made Civiltec continue to be your home?
Great office environment, great management, wonderful client relationships, a great staff; as an office manager, what more could you want from a company and the employees?
When you walk up in the morning what motivates you to get to work and handle the stresses of the project load?
Knowing that there is always an end in sight. Some projects go on and on and some are completed on a short-term basis. There is real job satisfaction when projects are completed and the client, contractors, and our staff are all happy with the results.
What has been a professional achievement of your time with Civiltec?
Actually, working at Civiltec with management, our staff, and the office environment is really the icing on the cake for my 43 years of engineering experience. I can truly say that coming to work for Civiltec was the highlight of my professional career.
Working in small firms I have had the good fortune of designing some really cool projects including the Phoenix Cardinals NFL football team summer training fields complex at Northern Arizona University in 1990, a 10-million gallon lake at a 10,000’ elevation at the Arizona Snow Bowl ski resort in Flagstaff, Az for snowmaking a few years ago, and the combined US Forest Service Research Center and NAU School of Forestry building and greenhouse complex improvements also at Northern Arizona University. Our 3.0 MG prestressed concrete water storage tank that we designed for the Town of Prescott Valley was also a career highlight. You can see them all on Google Earth.
If you could take a month-long vacation anywhere in the world where would you go and why?
We enjoyed our travels through Europe over the last few years while our daughter and her husband lived in Munich and would love to spend more time in Austria and Switzerland again. A month-long cruise would also be really great!
With retirement coming up in about a year, I’m looking forward to every day being a weekend!
What are some things you collect and why?
Not really a collector, but I have accumulated a few guitars over the years and am filling up my workshop with tools. I love to make a joyful noise on the 4, 6, and 12 strings and build stuff in the workshop. Maybe I’ll build a guitar!
