CEO of Dunaway (Fort Worth, TX), a leading independent multi-discipline design firm in Texas.
By Liisa Andreassen
Correspondent
Wilde started his career as a civil engineer at Dunaway in 2003. In 2021, he became the firm’s CEO – taking over the reins from 35-year Dunaway veteran, Tom Galbreath. The two worked together for a few years before Wilde was ready to set loose and lead the company through its next critical growth stage.
Wilde likes to talk about “The Dunaway Difference” and interprets this to mean that the company works together to match clients with the right expertise at the right time on every project.
“We have shared goals and allocate our top resources and people across markets to provide the best outcome for our clients,” he says.
Dunaway also knows that in order to best serve its clients it has to best serve its staff. And, it appears that’s happening as it won Zweig Group’s 2024 Best Firms To Work For award as well as a Hot Firm award.
“We believe that we are one team with one heart,” Wilde says. “This mentality permeates throughout our entire organization from the way we are structured to the way we share the financial profits. This approach has proven to be successful from both a culture and profitability standpoint.”
Training and other opportunities. Dunaway’s vision is to be recognized as the leading independent multi-discipline design firm in Texas and one of Wilde’s first acts as CEO back in 2021 was to open a Dallas office. With a strong presence in Texas, they have a unique opportunity to deliver integrated solutions to their clients by cross-selling their various service lines and enhancing collaboration between regions and lines of business.
For example, Dunaway is highlighting the deep-rooted partnership between their firm and Texas Christian University and the significance of the Burnett School of Medicine, which marks TCU’s first educational building outside its main campus in Fort Worth. They are also proud to announce that the school has recently achieved LEED Gold Certification, underscoring its commitment to sustainability and excellence.
Dunaway is proud to have provided planning and landscape architecture, civil and structural engineering, and surveying services to the school, which aims to extend TCU’s strong community brand to the Near Southside, where they will train the next generation of physicians.
In house, various teams across Texas have unlimited opportunities to lead through their culture and strategic committees, can share knowledge and resources across regions, and get to enjoy the additional compensation that this creates. Dunaway strives to be as transparent as possible because they believe that every team member makes a difference.
Training plays a large role at Dunaway and they have a series of homegrown training courses that their team members go through. This training includes technical, project management, and leadership training led by company senior leaders. In addition, Dunaway has created several cultural committees, including Good Works, Fun, and One Heart, and several strategic committees that are focused on making them a better company. This provides leadership opportunities outside of the team members’ job roles and exposure to leadership across the state.
Specifically, the “One Heart” culture at Dunaway emphasizes unity and collaboration. It means everyone passionately works toward a common goal as a unified team.
“We value a diverse team working together in an inclusive environment, bringing unique backgrounds, experiences, and ideas to solve problems, encourage innovation, and enhance the communities we live in and serve,” Wilde shares.
It’s this approach that makes Dunaway a stronger company and community. Their goal is for every team member, regardless of background, education, or role, to have equal access to resources and the opportunity to grow and discover their full potential.
Right now, Dunaway’s primary challenge is sourcing the right talent to achieve a 15 percent annual growth rate.
“We offer a well-defined path to ownership that is accessible to all team members and our main objective is to remain independent and gradually transition ownership to our team over time, aiming for around 10 percent of our workforce to become full equity owners,” he says.
Learning lessons; making improvements. In January 2024, Dunaway experienced a ransomware attack on their IT infrastructure and digital data. This disruption caused multiple days of downtime and rework on projects. Post-attack, they decided to do a total refresh of their IT infrastructure across all office locations. This included enhanced employee training, an improved backup strategy, mandatory multi-factor authentication, and increasing their cyber insurance coverage.
In 2025, Dunaway is focused on streamlining internal processes, improving project delivery, and using cutting-edge technology to optimize workflows. Wilde says he’s extremely excited about 2025 and shares that the company has three times the new project opportunities compared to 2024. It’s also invested in a brand-new IT infrastructure which allows it to be more nimble, flexible and reliable across all offices.
“We’re also diving deep into AI,” Wilde says.
It looks like that’s a given.