History of Berg Engineering Consultants, Ltd.

(Formally Brian Berg & Associates, Ltd. Consulting Engineers)

The beginning consisted of a drawing board, kitchen table, stool, and telephone in a small (10 x 10) bedroom at 1109 Hickory Lane. Work consisted of mainly cold calls and knocking on doors. The cold calls began to work so three months later the firm moved to a shared office with the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce at 25 Park and Shop, the strip shopping center at the corner of Arlington Heights Road and Higgins Road. The space consisted of one 20 foot x 12 foot room with one shared employee in an adjacent office.

From 1969 to 1972 the firm grew from one employee (Brian Sr.) And a secretary shared with the Chamber of Commerce to three employee’s. The secretary was hired full time and no longer worked for the Chamber. Because of this growth the firm moved to a 20 x 30 loft at 160 Bond Street above a machine shop. Shortly after moving there Don Martin came on board.

In 1974 technology was beginning to come into use in the office. The first technology was an IBM MAG CARD II system. This was a word processor that was used for specifications and letters.

In 1979, the firm became a professional corporation and took over the balance of the second floor with a total space of 1,600 sq. ft. The firm had many successful projects with Abbott Laboratories and Hollister. This work enabled the firm to grow to 7 employees.  In 1980 a part time draftsman was added named Brian Berg Jr.  His lettering was very bad but he sure could ink a schedule sheet.  Good thing drawings are not lettered by hand any more.

The Hollister project was highly successful earning an ASHRAE Illinois Chapter Energy Award in 1982, Region Award in 1983 and eventually earning a National Award in 1984. This project was also highly successful for Holabird & Root and was published in the Architectural Record in March 1982.

In the fall of 1981, ground was broken on a new facility in Schaumburg. The firm moved into 2,000 sq. ft. of its new building in June of 1982 and grew to 10 employees.  One of these new employees was a Mark Goedjen.

It sure is nice to finally have your own office.

Technology was now impacting the engineering. An HP-97 programmable calculator was used briefly for load calculations but proved too "custom" and cumbersome for universal use in the office. In 1982, the first computer (TRS model 16 with the CPM operating system) was acquired and became functional with "elite software" loads program and "Visicalc" spreadsheet.

In 1984, the first two CAD workstations were acquired. Don Martin and Brian, Sr. traveled for one week to El Paso, Texas for training and returned to train the office staff. Immediate results did not happen! The first project took four times as much time as manual drafting. Undaunted Don and Brian continued the quest and soon the system was on a par with manual drafting. Improvements in productivity continued at a rapid pace and was at an approximate 1.8 x rate when the system was retired in 1991. As a 2D drafting system, it was excellent because it was centrally controlled, stored and archived. Administration duties were nil, freeing time for the function of the firm.

1986 saw the firm requiring additional space. The addition where we are located in now was built and manual drafting was eliminated. Each person packed his personal belongings and his terminal and walked to the new environment.

Antique Museum.  The IBM MAG CARD system is on the left.

Now that technology was rapidly developing new additions were not greeted with as much fan fair as they used to be.  Except in 1987 when our ammonia blue line machine was wheeled out the door on a gurney and replaced with a Xerox machine.

During the time from 1986 to 1991 our office grew from 10 people to 17 people.  In 1989 Dan Brown came to our company.

From 1990 to 1991 new CADD systems were evaluated and tested in hopes of putting in the second D (design) into the automation.  Arris by Sigma Design was chosen because it was being used by 1/2 of our clients and it had all of the design packages that our office needed to do design as well as drafting.

The new CADD system was acquired in the spring of 1991.  The firm took advantage of a slow period that summer and imported a trainer to train everyone in the office. The fall of 1991 was greeted with great expectations every one was trained, the details had been translated and office standards had been set.  The new CADD system was ready. 

Right from the start it was apparent that the new CADD system would do exactly what we had wanted it to.  What we did not know is that it would impact our work in other ways.  The first was that by having the engineers type their own schedules and notes and the drafting being a byproduct of designing on the screen the quality of the documents would be near perfect.  Typos were all virtually eliminated.  The most significant benefit was that our office could engineer much larger projects.  Some of these projects were:  (Costs are MPF only)

1.  Hewitt Associates Core Development - $14,700,000.00
2.  Lincoln-Way High Schools 1999 -  $12,000,000.00
3.  West Chicago High School  -  $10,000,000.00
4.  Lockport East High School  - $9,600,000.00
5.  Lincoln-Way High Schools  1994 - $6,400,000.00
6.  Huntley High/Middle School Additions -  $5,000,000.00
7.  UOP Continuous Process Laboratory - $4,000,000.00
8.  Hinsdale High Schools 1998 - $4,000,000.00

If we were sketching and drafting we would have had to have 26 people to do these projects.  Instead we had 13 highly trained and experienced individuals designing the projects right on the computer.  Through the years the Arris system has been customized such that today it is more Berg CADD than Arris CADD.

In 1999 Brian Berg Jr., Dan Brown and Mark Goedjen began buying their stock in the company in preparation for the retirement of our founder.  

In 2000 at the request of our architect friends and customers we decided that we would begin providing electrical engineering services. This was a daunting task because we did not want to just be able to provide electrical engineering. We wanted an electrical engineering department that was equal to or even better in quality than the other engineering we provide. It took almost two years to plan what we were going to do. It took over one year of countless interviews to find the right person who could help us start our new electrical engineering department.

At the end of 2002 Hewitt Associates a long time client of ours began shutting down their internal facility department. Chuck Easley was working in the facility department at Hewitt Associates and was in charge of their electrical engineering work. We were not only familiar with his work at Hewitt but we had also been working with Chuck for over 15 years prior when he was working at an associated electrical engineering firm. Of all the people we interviewed for the position, Chuck is the only one who was extremely knowledgeable on the electrical code and was also extremely knowledgeable on all of the special systems. These systems included Nurse Call, telephone, data, sound and fire alarm systems. In January 2003 our electrical department was started. It was slow at first creating office standards and procedures during 2003 but in the fall of 2003 we hired our first electrical engineer and the real work began.  Chuck found an electrical engineering and design package (Design Master Electrical Software.) for AutoCAD that does engineering and design similar to the packages we used in Arris.  Today we have an electrical engineering department that rivals the rest of the company.

In 2002 it also became apparent that AutoCAD 2000 could finally do what Arris has been able to do since 1991. It also became apparent that if AutoCAD could not do what Arris could do, it could be programmed to do so. In the fall of 2002 Brian Jr. began writing, or should we call it rewriting, all of our custom applications that made Arris do design, in Visual Basic with in AutoCAD. This was done during spare moments and down time. While rewriting the applications they were also enhanced. 

In the spring of 2005 enough of the programs were complete so that AutoCAD could do what Arris could and more. In June of 2005 we switched the Mechanical, Plumbing and Fire Departments from Arris to AutoCAD 2006 (Electrical was already being done in AutoCAD). Because AutoCAD is actually the third CAD system that the office has had this change went very smoothly. In fact most customers probably do not know we switched.  All of the design packages we use in AutoCAD are similar to that being used today in Building Information Modeling.  The only thing missing is they were not in 3D.

The Electrical Engineering was so successful that the executive committee decided to extend ownership opportunities to Chuck Easley.  In October of 2006 Chuck vested himself in ownership of the company and became a member of the executive committee.

In 2002 Brian Jr. began playing around with the idea of changing the name of the company. It was apparent that the current name no longer reflected what the company was about. In the winter of 2006 this idea was brought to the executive committee and further investigated.

Berg - It is not about one person anymore and it has not been so for a long time. It is about one person’s vision continued by successors dedicated to that vision. That vision created an engineering company that maintains high standards of professional competence and ethics; an engineering company of individuals working as a team challenging each other; an engineering company that strives each day to provide innovative and affordable solutions to any building system design. This is who we are.

Engineering - The application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to man in structures, machines, products, systems and processes. This is what we do.

Consultants - We provide our professional expertise in building systems to all who need it. This is why we are here.

Brian Berg & Associates, Ltd. proudly presents our new name that better represents who we are, what we do and why we exist. From now on we will be called Berg Engineering Consultants, Ltd. We look forward to continuing our legacy into the future.

On November, 15th 2006 Berg Engineering Consultants, Ltd. became our new name. At the beginning of January 2007 it was presented to the public at large.

More history to come as we make it!