Firm restructures to diversify services.

• Author: GOULIQUER, DIANNE
• Position: DST Consulting Engineers - Brief Article

"Practical solutions fast and on budget" has been DST Consulting Engineers motto since it opened its first office in Thunder Bay 30 years ago.

President Mike Fabius believes it's that promise to customers that has helped the company remain prosperous not only in Northern Ontario, but across the province.

DST is a firm of engineers, scientists and contractors that provides geoscience and related services like geotechnical and environmental engineering, materials sciences, highway engineering, green building technologies, mining engineering, surface and groundwater studies, aggregate resources, ground stabilization and drilling technologies.

As the company moves into the second phase of a corporate-wide reorganization, Fabius says customers can still rely on DST's 30-year promise. Now, however, that promise is coming from a company that is striving to become more streamlined and efficient as it faces the challenges in the new millennium.

Changes at DST began nearly seven years ago when the company started exploring expansion opportunities outside of Thunder Bay, Fabius says.

"Originally we set out to expand out of Thunder Bay in 1993," he says. "We set up different branch offices that worked as their own profit centres. It helped them to focus on developing their own local markets."

But because DST could offer such diverse services that were often unmatched by other engineering firms, the company soon found itself using the specialty resources of two or three branch offices for one major project.

"The old branch structure didn't make a lot of sense anymore," Fabius says.

It was then that he realized a change in corporate structure was necessary to maximize profitability and efficiency and to better service customers as well.

The result was the recent creation of a five-person management team to "focus on the big picture" and to fuel the company's growth.

Fabius describes DST as a "fairly ambitious" company with an annual growth rate of approximately 20 per cent. The newly formed management team will oversee major departments (building technologies, construction, highway services, environmental services and geotechnical services) to maintain this growth, and it will also share ownership to keep the company and its employees more accountable.

"Now we'll have three...