OKC architecture and engineering firm expanding

Oklahoma City-based architecture and engineering firm FSB has expanded and rebranded to reflect its more global reach.

FSB president and CEO Gary James said the company’s staff has increased by about 20 percent every year for the last five years, and the jobs FSB offers are mostly technical, so they offer good pay.

“It’s been a really great growth,” James said. “It’s been consistent and sustainable for the last several years.”

The company rebranded from Frankfurt Short Bruza to FSB in November to give a more global look and feel, James said. It has also doubled the size of its office space to keep up with its growth.

James credits the expansion to FSB’s business structure of putting subject experts at the head of each of the company’s seven market sectors, such as aviation, corporate, federal and education. A subject expert is someone who has worked in a specific market sector for his or her entire career, he said.

“I think once you put those subject matter experts at the top of those market sectors and then get a

team of project managers and staff that work under them and really push the goal in the same direction, I think that has been really the key as to just expertise in each of those market sectors,” James said.

FSB has worked on projects both across the country and across the world. The company has done a project for American Airlines in Brazil and designed the aviation facility for the new Air Force One aircraft at Joint Andrews Air Force Base, James said.

“But at the same time some of our market sectors — for example our infrastructure technology market, our education market and our civic market — are very local projects,” James said. “And we’re doing very local small projects as well as the bigger projects.”

FSB employs 165 people at its headquarters in Oklahoma City, where James said his employees are just a plane ride away from their clients.

On Friday, FSB announced the naming of three new principals, or market sector leaders, and one new discipline director. Brian Suaer will lead infrastructure and technology for the firm, Dennis Glover will lead the education division, Laure Majors will head up business development, and Rebel Smith will be the director of mechanical engineering discipline.

“One of the things that we really really want to emphasize here at FSB is growth paths for our staff and you don’t have to wait for someone to retire to move up in our company,” James said. “And we want to recognize and emphasize the talents that we have.”