Nov. 9, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Interstate Office Products.

If it hadn’t been clear before, by the time last summer’s interns came to work, it was more than obvious DGR Engineering was out of space.

“We went from having room for 12 to 20 people with one expansion, but then we grew our staff to 30 full-time employees, so we moved a bunch of stuff into a garage to give us extra room. This past summer, including all the interns, we had 38 people operating out of our office, and we were putting people to work on folding white tables,” said Trent Bruce, vice president and Sioux Falls office manager.

Fortunately, a solution already was under construction nearby. And now, thanks to an intentional design approach, the firm has created a place employees enjoy coming to work that allows room for growth.

DGR Engineering was founded in 1952 and expanded to Sioux Falls in 1973. It had been located in an office at 57th Street and Southeastern Avenue but now has more than doubled in size with a move to a new building at Dawley Farm Village along Veterans Parkway north of 26th Street.

DGR offers civil and site development services, water/wastewater, electrical power and aviation engineering, as well as engineering support services, including landscape architecture, land acquisition, geographic information systems and land surveying.

“A large majority of our team is in the office,” Bruce said. “We allow some work from home on an as-needed basis, but our day-to-day work is in the office as well as on project locations in multiple communities across the area.”

Working with Architecture Incorporated and general contractor Hoogendoorn Construction, DGR drew on a longtime relationship with Interstate Office Products in space planning and furnishing the new office.

“We’ve now helped them through multiple moves and expansions, including at their Rock Rapids, Iowa, location, so we knew how to keep the look and theme for the Sioux Falls office despite it being an entirely new building,” said IOP account manager Mark Payne, who worked on the office with interior designer Abby Tufvesson.

And even though the firm’s Rock Rapids project was just completed a couple of years ago, “technology is always changing,” Bruce added. “In the last five years, our use of Teams and audio and video software has really increased, so it was important that all our workspaces were properly designed and that we had enough conference rooms for that type of work.”

Because DGR feels its clients are best served from in-office interaction among its team, the new office is set up to be an especially welcoming and comfortable place to work.

“Everyone got a height-adjustable desk, and for the most part all the furniture is new,” Tufvesson said. “They have multiple areas for storage and in some cases got to choose what type of storage worked best for them.”

The space is a mix of private offices and workstations with a cohesive look that mimics the Iowa location’s style.

“This was definitely designed for people to be in the office,” Payne said. “They need to access historical records, including some older paper files, so we relocated a lot of that and helped them organize it in the new space.”

DGR meets with clients an estimated 10 times a week in its office, including some regularly scheduled project updates, so the conference space is well used, Bruce said.

“A lot of our clients like to meet in person to look through things, so it’s nice to be able to be in a space that’s flexible with enough room for everyone to be together – even if it’s just our team in the room and we’re on a videoconference,” he said.

The work cafe is a combination break room and training room with a partition that can be used to divide it as needed.

“We can fit up to 50 people there, but our staff can utilize it for lunches easily,” Bruce said. “I walked by the other day, and three high-top tables were full, where we wouldn’t have had room for that before, and the oven got hooked up, and within minutes someone was making cookies there.”

Working with IOP “has been great,” Bruce said. “They’re very reactive to our wants and needs, and because our relationship has been built over the years, they understand us and what sets us apart from other firms. It’s a great relationship, and their understanding of how we operate and what we want to see in our offices makes the process a lot easier.”

Case in point: DGR even moved in ahead of its November target date.

“It all went really smooth,” Bruce said. “We had a good team that represented our culture and worked in our best interest, which was beneficial to the overall project. It was a great experience, and everyone has been really excited about the new space.”

To learn more about how Interstate Office Products can meet your office needs in the Sioux Falls area and beyond, visit i-o-p.com or call 605-339-0300.