MANKATO’S WORKWEAR HEADQUARTERS

TIME TO START THINKING ABOUT SNOWBLOWERS?

Winter Boots

touch seven different projects. We did the 7 West Tap House, the La Terraza restaurant, and the Minnesota Valley Action Council. We do all Community Bank renovations and we’ve done several projects out at the Mankato Regional Airport, including renovations to the terminal and the flight school out there, as well as the hangar buildings. I’m a pilot. We keep our corporate airplane in the hangar that we designed back in 2008. It’s really honoring to do work locally, and it’s a lot of fun.

You recently celebrated your 15th business anniversary. How has your company evolved over the years?

Corey: I’m happy and honored to say our first employee is still with us. Christine Ahmann is her name. Our joke is she came with the furniture. She came on board with us when we started our company in October of 2007. We started with just the two of us. Now we have 35 employees, 31 at Brunton Architects & Engineers and four at Brunton Construction.

We started on the second floor of Community Bank in a small 700 sq ft storage room. It took us about nine months to outgrow that. Then we moved downstairs, and we outgrew that space in a year. That was when we got the opportunity to build this building at our current location. So, we built this in 2014 and we’ve been in here ever since. Now we’re outgrowing this space.

It sounds like you’re growing, growing, growing!

Corey: We grew through COVID, and in 2022 we are projected to increase our revenues by 200 percent. We attribute our continued growth to our client-centric mindset. The meaningful relationships we build with them fuel our passion for finding cost saving and innovative building solutions. But it’s not all roses. Our costs have gone up a lot over the years as well. Everybody’s costs are going up right now. Still, we continue to grow. We’ve added six staff members to the team in the last year. Two years ago, there were three people in the Hopkins office, now we’re at nine.

But it’s important for you to know that it’s not about being big. It’s never been about being big. It’s always about being better. And we’re not going to get bigger until we can become better. That is part of our culture here. Growing slowly and carefully is the seed for a successful future.

What role does technology play at Brunton?

Corey: We have become more sophisticated in our understanding of what our clients want and what they expect. We have absolutely embraced technology to the highest level. When the pandemic hit, we were already ready for it. We had laptops in the hands of staff members and video camera teleconferencing in place. When COVID hit, we were ready. We stayed tight as a unit, and we still met our deadlines.

We also immerse our clients in technology. We have a high level of responsibility to communicate design to them, and we utilize technology to provide that. We’ve been using Revit, a building information and modeling or BIM tool, since the day we opened our doors in 2007. It’s used as a drafting tool and it literally extrudes the building three dimensionally. Mechanical can show their ductwork and if it’s sticking through a wall, we can see it. A lot of clash detection is cleaned up with the use of that software, and we’ve been