Andy has 15 years of experience in mechanical engineering and project management, with a focus on HVAC and plumbing design for public and institutional clients. He has provided mechanical design and value engineering for scores of projects in occupied facilities, and more than 50 work orders under a dozen on-call contracts.
As an Associate at FSi, Andy acts as a mentor to newer engineers and leads the in-house quality team. He has a difficult time choosing a favorite project, but when pressed, he will tell you about how much he enjoyed designing systems for Boeing’s 4-81 West Tower offices, and the 15-10 air handler replacement at Boeing’s South Park site. The complexity of the problems he got to solve and the elegant solutions he offered to his client give him personal and professional satisfaction. He takes great enjoyment in seeing discrete pieces come together into a whole system, and the systems come together into a whole building.
He also gets satisfaction from helping his clients save money through energy service company (ESCO) contracts, which provide funding to finance energy-efficient upgrades to businesses that can document expected efficiencies with the installation of new equipment.
Both coworkers and clients depend on Andy to say the unexpected. Some call him blunt, but to him, it is important to describe the world exactly as it is. When he leads teams, the engineers working with him know they can count on his praise when they’ve done well, and advice when there is room for improvement. A fond piece of FSi lore has Andy firing a nerf dart at an engineer to alert him to a mistake. Andy hastens to add that the dart was an attention-getter and that he immediately offered coaching to the engineer afterwards. The story vividly illustrates one of the many ways Andy delivers critiques with characteristic directness and good humor.
Good humor seems to be a family trait in this tight-knit family. Andy’s first engineering instructor was his father, who let him watch as he made household repairs. “When my brothers and I hear Dad say, ‘Well, if it were me…’ we know we’d better listen to what comes next, because it’s going to be right.” At age 4, his mother allowed him to imitate his father, taking a screwdriver and undoing every light switch in the house and putting them all back together again. He sees this as the start of a lifetime interest in how things work. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, he knew mechanical engineering was the career for him and headed off to Washington State University for his BSME.
Andy remains a proud Cougar, in regular attendance at WSU football games. He and his wife Nicole love taking their daughters Kennedy and Reagan to visit the lake cabins belonging to each side of the family. On weekends, he enjoys home improvement projects, which he describes as a chance “to put down the slide rules and pick up the hammers.”