Engineering a Family Business

Elisabeth DeCoursey and Scott Martens have revitalized a 119-year-old Kansas City company.

There are few small businesses with histories as long as Kansas City Testing & Engineering’s.The owners, Elisabeth DeCoursey and Scott Martens, bought the business in 2009, when it was still part of Tetra Tech, a national consulting, construction and engineering firm. Tetra Tech was planning to shut down the unit—until the married couple offered to take it over.One of their first decisions was to change the name to Kansas City Testing & Engineering. KCTE was founded in 1894 and became widely known in the local business community. But it went through a series of name changes beginning in the 1980s as it was bought and sold by various larger companies.“Historically, there are still a lot of people in the industry who are familiar with that name, which is one reason we wanted to bring it back,” said Martens, who was a construction materials engineer and project manager at Tetra Tech.

The purchase was a great move for the young couple—and KCTE. The company has seen revenues grow by an average of 30 percent each year, and revenue is now about $2 million annually, said DeCoursey, who previously worked as a software project manager for IBM. She credits the company’s growth to meeting client’s needs, word-of-mouth testimonials and return business.

“We do quality work and people come back,” she said.

Separation of Powers

DeCoursey is KCTE president, and Martens is vice president. She manages the books and personnel while Martens handles quality control and oversees projects. They both seek out new business. Their separation of duties at KCTE fosters a business-like relationship on the job, even though they are married, DeCoursey said.

“I had no engineering experience before we started this, but I had strong business experience,” DeCoursey said. “Scott had fantastic engineering experience, so that’s why this worked. We had two different areas of knowledge.”

They balance their work with two children, ages 2 and 3, and another on the way.

Married or not, DeCoursey and Martens face the same challenges as any small business, and that was especially true at the beginning, Martens said.

“It’s very stressful getting started—making payrolls and making sure you get to the level where you have some reserves,” Martens said.

“It is a lot better now.”

Another challenge was making customers realize that the new company under a different name could still provide the same services it did with Tetra Tech, DeCoursey said.

“People didn’t understand we were a viable company,” she said. “They thought, ‘It’s a small business, can they really do everything they did before?’ The answer is yes, because we have all the equipment and all the trained people.”

Digging In

The company’s primary work is to test soils, concrete and asphalt at road or building construction sites. Technicians bore into the ground to test soil for water, rock content or possible contaminants and to evaluate stability of the soil, Martens said. They also test concrete blocks, poured foundations and paved surfaces for density and strength.

Owning the company doesn’t spare DeCoursey and Martens from some hard and long duty outdoors with the rest of the crew on certain projects.

“We both get out in the field a lot,” DeCoursey said.

One recent project was to test subsoil and paving for a new track at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan. The track operators were building a new track to change the degree of banking, and the work had to be squeezed in between two races, Martens said.

“Those were some long 16-hour days paving that track,” Martens said. “We tested the quality of asphalt to make sure the steam roller went over it enough times to compact it correctly.”

KCTE has 21 full-time employees who operate in the field or in a lab at the company’s office just off Interstate 35 near Cambridge Circle. The company has been able to retain full-time employees through slow times and also hires a lot of interns, DeCoursey said. The full-time employees have an average of 19 years’ experience doing projects in the Kansas City area.

KCTE works primarily for commercial clients, 95 percent of them within 100 miles of Kansas City, Martens said. But it also does government contracts. The company has multiple private and government certifications required by many clients.

One of the bigger KCTE projects is work for NorthPoint Development, which is creating an industrial park on the old site of General Motors’ Fairfax plant. KCTE is doing soil and environmental studies at the site.

Many types of new building projects require the services KCTE provides. The company tests soils and materials for retail buildings and apartments, parking garages, tunnels, dams, pipelines, office structures and hotels, for example.

The Hilton Garden Inn near Kansas City International Airport and the new Marriott Courtyard hotel at Briarcliff were recent clients. So was Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.

KCTE does a variety of environmental work, such as helping clients craft cost-effective ways to remove asbestos, mold, lead-based paint or subsurface contaminants. The company also is a consultant on environmental permitting, pollutant cleanup and soil and air quality. And they offer air-quality testing in some of the large storage caves beneath Kansas City.

Bad Economy, Great Opportunity

KCTE business is impacted by the economy, but it was the downturn in construction during the 2008 recession that presented the opportunity to buy the business, DeCoursey said. Tetra Tech, a national company, was interested in shedding divisions that were not doing well, such as its unit in Kansas City, Kan., she said.

Owning the business independent of Tetra Tech had some major advantages, DeCoursey said. Without Tetra Tech’s oversight and protocols, for example, she and Martens are able to make their own decisions on seeking and carrying out projects.

“Our general scope of services didn’t change, but we changed our approach to the business,” DeCoursey said. “It made a big difference in dealing with local clients.”

The company can price services more fluidly and give special discounts to nonprofits. In some cases, they donate services.

“We don’t have a rigid profit margin for each project,” DeCoursey said. “We have a lot of flexibility being a small business.”

That flexibility helps KCTE compete with its five or six main rivals, she said. KCTE is one of the smaller businesses of its type in Kansas City, but operates at a higher level, DeCoursey said.

“When we are marketing ourselves and someone asks ‘who are you competing against,’ I don’t say that it is the same-sized companies as us,” DeCoursey said. “I say our competition is the bigger companies. We may have a smaller staff and fewer offices, but we can offer the same level of services—and we have a fully equipped laboratory.”

Closer to the Action

DeCoursey and Martens would like to open additional offices to help their business grow.

“The services we provide are more cost-effective if you are close to the construction site,” DeCoursey said. “You have better competitive advantages to bid.”

KCTE has been recognized for its work, including being named new small business of the year in 2011 by the Kansas City Kansas Area Chamber of Commerce.

DeCoursey said the variety of work is what she likes best about the KCTE business.

“It’s different every day,” she said. “You could be outside, you could be inside, you could be working on your business or networking. Really, there is a lot of satisfaction in doing it for yourself.”

Martens said pleasing customers is a strong reward for owning the business.

“One thing I like is being able to go out and solve a problem for a client on the job site,” he said. “We can find a solution to get the project moving along.”