After hitting several major milestones in 2018—like joining with WR-Martin and celebrating 35 years in business—we didn’t think we’d be able to top those achievements. But now we’re back to celebrate 12 more accomplishments from the past 12 months.
We’re so thankful to our employees, clients, and vendors for making 2019 a year of growth and success. As the year and the decade come to a close, all of us here at WithersRavenel wish you a bright and joyful new year!
100 Percent Employee-Owned
Since the company’s transition to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in 2014, WithersRavenel has been working toward 100% employee ownership. Five years later, through the tireless work of our management team and the commitment of our employees, we have achieved our goal to fully share the company’s long-term successes among all employees.
62 New Hires
For us, sustainability is about more than green building materials or streamlined operations: it’s about creating a company that can weather economic swings, changing technology, and everything that life throws at us. We’ve hired 62 new employees—spread across every office, discipline, and level of experience—to ensure an unbroken chain of knowledge, best practices, and lessons learned. (Want to become the next member of our team? Check out our open positions!)
130 New Clients
We can think of no greater testament to the quality of your work than to have new clients entrust their most important and aspirational projects to you. We’re honored by all of the public agencies, private companies, and ordinary citizens who relied on us to transform their concepts into concrete.
Wilmington Office Celebrates 15 Years
Our Wilmington office has enabled us to provide engineering, planning, and surveying services to the Coastal region. It has also allowed us to strengthen our environmental capabilities to address the specific challenges faced by Coastal clients, like CAMA permitting. We could think of no better way to celebrate reaching 15 years than a boats-and-brats themed party with our clients.
$584 Million to Date in Funding
With the power of grant and loan funding, we help clients ignite economic growth, promote sustainability, and build communities that can accommodate a vibrant quality of life. To date, our dedicated funding team—which now includes Catherine Renbarger, Seth Robertson, and Bob Chandler—has helped local governments secure more than $584 million in funding from regional, state, and federal sources.
7 Industry Awards
We believe that the ultimate award is objectives met, results achieved, and clients satisfied—industry recognition is icing on the cake. We’re proud to have brought home the TBJ Fast 50 Award; PSMJ Award for Client Satisfaction; ENR Top 500 Design Firm; CX-Cellence Award for Client Experience; ACEC Engineering Excellence Award, Honors; Greater Triangle Stewardship Development Awards, Silver Stewardship Development Award; and two TBJ SPACE awards.
New Planning Division Added
With the addition of Planning Director Brendie Vega, AICP, WithersRavenel now offers comprehensive planning services to municipalities, counties, and regional agencies, as well as parks and recreation departments. The Planning Division focuses on providing rezoning, entitlement, ordinance writing, master planning, and long-range planning services.
50 Employee Peer-Recognition Awards Given
Our employees demonstrate our Core Values of Integrity, Respect, Quality, Sustainability, and Community every day. Through our Core Value Awards, or CVAs, employees have an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the exemplary
Increased Investment in Professional Development
Empowering our employees to do their best work strengthens individuals and teams and leads to greater company success, which in turn yields greater benefits for our employee-owners. To continue this virtuous cycle, we have invested in company-wide access to LinkedIn Learning and increased the number of Lunch-and-Learns we offer.
23 Service Projects
Giving back to our communities is an important part of our identity at WithersRavenel. This year, our employees volunteered across the state with organizations like the Miracle League of the Triangle, Work on Wilmington, Paws for People, and the Future City Competition.
New Client Experience Team
Eddie Staley, WithersRavenel’s Director of Local Government Business Development, has been promoted to the newly created role of Chief Experience and Innovation Officer. In this capacity, he will focus on designing, implementing, and improving customer and employee experiences across service offerings and modes of communication. He will also manage the process of identifying emerging trends in technology to create new solutions for our company and customers.
#1 Post on NC-ASLA’s Instagram Takeover
In 2019, we achieved our goal becoming more social by joining the community on Instagram! It was a privilege to be invited to take over NC-ASLA’s feed, and no one was more surprised than we were to find out that ours became their #1 takeover post.