BKF began on the shoulders of the prolific Willis "Jack" Frost in 1915. Jack began his career as a railroad surveyor in the midwest, eventually surveying his way along the railroad to the California. His surveying experience and education as a Civil Engineer helped him expand his clientele in Redwood City and the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1945 Larry Brian joined him and the firm was named Frost & Brian Civil Engineers.
The second era of BKF's history shows how we played a large role in the development of Stanford University, Stanford Shopping Center, and Silicon Valley as a whole. In fact, we worked on the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Site at Stanford Research/Industrial Park in 1956! We even delivered infrastructure plans for the very first store at Stanford Shopping Mall, I. Magnin, now occupied by Macy’s.
Also, in the late 1950s Lawrence G. Brian (yes, the Brian that gave us the "B" in BKF) was joined by Stan Kangas and Robert Foulk. In 1970 they became Principals and our name changed to Brian Kangas Foulk & Associates.
A lot happened in the last two decades of the century. Jan O'Flaherty (with the help of Dave Richwood and few others) helped establish our third office in San Jose. Dave LaVelle was later named CEO and Stan Kangas retired. Many of BKF's current Principals got their start at BKF as interns or entry-level engineers during this era. With the help of our growing leadership team our portfolio grew with projects like NASA Ames Research Center, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Genentech, Santana Row, Alameda Naval Air Station, Oracle World Headquarters, Palm Drive at Stanford, etc.
The first decade of the 21st Century was a time of expansion for BKF. We added 5 new offices in California, including: Pleasanton (2001), Sacramento (2006), Orange County (2008), Richmond (2008), Santa Rosa (Carlenzoli in 2009). We also named 5 new principals, including: Todd Adair (2002), Dan Schaefer (2002), Natalina Bernardi (2002), Scott R. Schork (2007), and Greg Hurd (2009).
Our work on marquee projects in California continued with the completion of the initial phase of Santana Row, Highway 152/156 Interchange, and Honda Port of Entry and also began work on projects like SVBX (BART - Fremont to San Jose), VA Palo Alto Medical Center Improvements, and SMART (Rail project in Sonoma/Marin County).
Between 2011 and 2019 BKF reached many historic milestones. For the first time in our history, we surpassed the 500 employee mark, and reached 15 offices in both northern and southern California (adding Oakland our HQ, San Francisco, San Rafael, Modesto, Salinas, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo locations). In this timeframe, we received numerous industry awards and accolades for multiple/consecutive years including: Top Workplace in the SF Bay Area by the Bay Area News Group, Best Firm to Work For/Hot Firm Award by the Zweig Group, #1 Engineering Firm by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, #19 on the SF Times’ Healthiest Employers List, 2018 Survey Hours Champion by the California & Nevada Civil Engineers and Land Surveyors Association, and ENR’s 2017 California Design Firm of the Year.
Jaysen Long, Brian Scott, Davis Thresh, Chris Rideout, Eric Girod, Jacob Nguyen, and Gordon Sweet were named Principal in this timespan, rounding out BKF's leadership team of 12 owners. With their help, we have also won, started, or finished many new high profile projects, including: Chase Center, Salesforce Tower, Netflix Campus, Gerald Desmond Bridge, VA Palo Alto Campus, SMART, Devil's Slide Trail, Hunter's Point, ParkMerced, Treasure Island, Marin-Sonoma Narrows, and countless hospitals, schools, offices, parks, roads, trails, and more.
In January 2019, at the closing of this era, Principal/Vice President Jaysen Long was appointed Chief Operating Officer, a new position within BKF. Director of Accounting/Controller Jean Chen was promoted to Chief Financial Officer.
Greg Hurd became the fifth President/CEO in our 105-year history, he will lead BKF into the next era, overseeing the vision and future development of our firm.