KL&A excels at the extraordinary

LOVELAND – Focusing on high-end residential and specialty steel design, fabrication and construction, KL&A Inc. in Loveland is riding a wave of success and employee satisfaction any business would envy.

The firm, founded in California in 1994 but quickly relocated to Colorado, saw its revenue shoot up 345 percent over the past three years, landing it in the No. 2 spot on the 2008 Mercury list for companies with more than $2 million in revenue.

KL&A also was named one of the top 10 “Best Firms to Work For” by Structural Engineer magazine last October.

A pretty good year, you might say.

“That’s a big deal to us because it’s a national recognition,” company COO Douglas Rutledge said of the Best Firms designation. “And it’s the second year in a row that we’ve been in the top 10.”

Rutledge said the business was founded by a practicing structural engineer, a professor from Stanford University and a forensic engineer from Menlo Park, Calif. At about the same time, the firm opened two offices in Colorado. Rutledge said managers made a business decision to sell off the California office and concentrate on Colorado, where KL&A now has offices in Loveland, Golden, Denver and Basalt.

Rutledge said the company has emphasized structural steel design for resorts, including projects in Jackson Hole, Wyo. and the Roaring Fork Valley including the Aspen area. Last year, KL&A did two big projects in Aspen – the reconstruction of the iconic Limelight Lodge and Monarch, a high-end residential project.

The company’s revenue soared last year, which Rutledge attributes in part to increasing the construction portion of the business.

“We had some pretty large construction projects last year, including the Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio (in Southwest Colorado) for the Southern Ute Tribe. That was about an $8 million project for us,” he said.

Locally, KL&A’s imprint can be seen on the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, for which the company did the structural engineering, and the city of Loveland Police and City Building that KL&A designed and built.

The company also did the structural engineering for the amazing Great Platte River Road Archway that spans Interstate 80 near Kearney, Neb.

Rutledge said one thing that makes KL&A unique is that it fabricates the steel it uses for its projects through steel contractors. “It gives us more control and huge benefits to the owner of the building,” he said. “It builds economy, speed and predictability into the process.”

On its Web site, www.klaa.com, the company shows it is not modest about its abilities. “We excel at the extraordinary,” the home page welcome tells viewers.

Rutledge, who is KL&A’s principal owner along with CFO Brant Lahnert and chief executive Gregory Kingsley, said he’s proud of the progress and the mark the company has made in its 14 years.

“We feel like we’re breaking new ground,” he said. “We’ve always had a vision of revolutionizing the way buildings are designed and built.”

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