From his first job as a paperboy to owning one of Orange County’s largest construction engineering companies, Darin Anderson has always had an entrepreneurial drive.
Anderson and business partners Chuck O’Neal and Paul Silva purchased a majority share of Salas O’Brien, a facilities planning, engineering and architectural design firm, in 2006 when it had revenue of $4.6 million and 30 employees.
The firm is expected to bring in 2019 revenue of $145 million and currently employs about 650 people in about 20 offices. Its headquarters are in the South Coast Metro area of Santa Ana.
Under Anderson’s leadership, the firm has made nine acquisitions and is now 100% employee-owned after a 2016 decision to adopt an employee stock ownership plan.
That restructuring effort contributed to an increase in business and higher staff retention, according to the company.
Anderson was one of five honored at Business Journal’s 18th annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards at Hotel Irvine, held on March 12 (see profiles of other winners, pages 1, 4 and 8).
Personal, Professional Gains
“I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Anderson said, giving a nod to his adopted parents for his can-do attitude. “They instilled the confidence in me to do whatever I wanted to do.”
He describes them as “humble and hardworking” people who hoped he would achieve what they did not: graduate college.
It’s a lesson he hopes to impart to others. Anderson is still heavily involved with his alma mater, University of California Riverside, and sits on the board of regents for the UC system.
His childhood ventures—after his stint delivering newspapers, he started a lawn mowing business at 14—helped him understand ownership, a concept that he is now passing on through his employee-owned firm.
“I wanted to share the rewards and value of ownership with everyone in the firm, and empower employees to make decisions,” Anderson said, adding that the company had a turnover rate of less than 5% over the past five years. “People are our greatest assets, and we treat them as such.”
Upon graduating from UCR in 1989, Anderson was awarded the Dean Thomas L. Broadbent Commencement Award for outstanding male graduate. He finished his MBA at the same college two years later, and in 2002 he received the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from the UCR Alumni Association.
He earned his CPA during his first job after college: a senior auditor at Price Waterhouse. He was teaching accounting at UCR when one of his students approached him with his next job opportunity.
“A student’s dad was starting an engineering firm and was looking for a CFO,” Anderson said. He had his second CFO stint at the age of 30 when he joined engineering consulting firm Kleinfelder, where he met his wife, Lori, an engineer in the Las Vegas office and “a smart cookie with wonderful values.”
They married in 2001 and have since added two children to the family.
Jump ahead to 2005 when Salas O’Brien Founding Principal Carl Salas was looking to grow his firm. He met with Anderson, who continues to hold true on his promise.
Despite the effects of the recession that hampered the engineering sector through 2012, the firm has had only one year with billings less than the prior year.
The company’s growth strategy is twofold: bring on and grow relationships with large clients, and enter into new markets through acquisitions.
Anderson led the first successful merger in 2012, bringing on additional business units in Northern California and Seattle and retaining the original leadership of the acquired firms to maintain a local, entrepreneurial focus while creating a national presence.
Its most recent merger, in February, was with WMA Consulting Engineers, which added locations in Chicago and Denver. WMA specializes in high-rise, commercial, higher education, healthcare and institutional building projects.
“Although Salas O’Brien is growing very rapidly, we very carefully screen the firms we choose to partner with,” Anderson said at the time of the announcement. “I’m especially pleased that the whole WMA team will become employee-owners of our combined organization.”
Today, Salas Obrien services clients of the likes of Amazon, Verizon and Microsoft, as well as hospitals and universities.
“We focus on long-term relationships with our clients, with our process getting better and better with each project,” Anderson said.
With more than more than $3.5 billion in construction volume, the company has also made sustainability an increasingly important aspect of the business model. Its designs, the company says, have saved over 22 million kWh per year for clients, meaning it’s kept more than 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere.
His first job as a paperboy is still paying dividends in his downtime.
A former coach to his kids’ soccer and baseball teams, he now cycles about 200 miles and runs close to 20 miles per week.
