DCI engineers

About DCI Engineers

DCI Engineers is an American structural and civil engineering firm operating under the tagline Engineering What's Possible Since 1988. Its three stated principles are service, innovation and value, and it works across commercial, residential, healthcare, education, government and industrial projects.

The firm employs more than 350 people across 21 offices in ten states, from Alaska to the East Coast, and organises technical expertise around 20 defined markets. Each market is led by a specialist who acts both as a focused resource for project partners and as a company-wide technical reference, so knowledge developed on one project in one region is available across the whole business.

History

DCI began in 1988 as D'Amato Conversano Inc., founded by two friends, Mark D'Amato and Guy Conversano, working out of a home basement in Kirkland, Washington. Early work included structural design for a local driving range, followed by the firm's first large-scale commission: an aquarium with separate dolphin and shark tanks.

A civil department was added in 1992 at client request. Geographic expansion followed steadily: Everett, Washington in 1995; the first out-of-state office in Portland, Oregon and an office in Spokane in 1998; San Diego in 2001, opening the California market; Austin, Texas in 2008 as the first non-west-coast location; Irvine in 2012; San Francisco and Anchorage in 2013 alongside the acquisition of SDE; Los Angeles in 2015; and Denver in 2016 as the first intermountain office, together with Bellevue and Everett satellites and the addition of right-of-way services.

The firm passed 300 employees in 2017, the same year it acquired BCE Structural and added offices in Kalispell, Missoula and Bozeman, Montana. In 2022 DCI joined forces with MacIntosh Engineering in Wilmington, Delaware and Wayne, Pennsylvania, becoming a genuinely national firm with an East Coast presence. Madsen Engineering in New York City followed in 2023, and in 2024 DCI established its first surveying group through Duryea and Associates in Spokane.

Services

• Structural engineering – the founding discipline, covering new build and remodel across all market sectors.
• Civil engineering – site and land development for public and private projects.
• Industrial engineering – heavy industrial structures and facilities.
• Bridge engineering – bridge design and assessment.
• Right-of-way services – added in 2016 out of the Spokane office.
• Surveying – delivered through Duryea and Associates, a division of DCI Engineers.
• Specialty engineering – targeted technical services outside the main disciplines.
• Sustainable design – structural strategies that reduce embodied carbon and material use.

Approach and Culture

DCI describes itself as a regional practice with national experience. Because its engineers work within specific jurisdictions over long periods, they develop detailed familiarity with local and state code requirements, and the firm notes that it has introduced jurisdictions to new building solutions rather than only complying with existing ones. Cross-office collaboration and adoption of new technologies are presented as core to how the business runs.

Three commitments sit alongside the technical work: philanthropy, aimed at supporting communities and people entering the industry; sustainability, framed around the engineer's ability to reduce impact through structural decisions; and equity and diversity, which the firm links directly to innovation. Co-founder Mark D'Amato summarises the operating philosophy in one line about trust being everything.

Growth Through Partnership

A defining characteristic of DCI is that much of its expansion has come through joining with existing firms rather than opening greenfield offices. SDE, BCE Structural, MacIntosh Engineering, Madsen Engineering and Duryea and Associates all brought established local teams, client relationships and regional knowledge. The firm publicly credits those histories as part of its own identity, which is a notably different framing from the absorb-and-rebrand pattern common in engineering consolidation.

Why DCI Matters to the AEC Industry

For architects, developers and contractors, DCI is a useful example of how a structural practice scales without losing local knowledge. The market-leader model gives project teams access to a specialist in their building type while keeping the day-to-day engineer nearby and fluent in the local code environment. Its combination of structural, civil, bridge, survey and right-of-way capability also means a single consultant can carry a site from entitlement through to structural completion, which matters most on complex urban infill and mixed-use projects where those disciplines constantly interact.