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Volume 13
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Number 12
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DECEMBER 2015
Problem solver
Esprit de door
MEP Consulting Engineers’ (MEPCE) Sheila Nemati
Patrick Duffy at Wayne Dalton’s Lewisville corporate office.
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rowing up, Sheila Nemati never met a math problem she didn’t like. “As a young teenager, I was fascinated with mathematics and performed very well in the subject,” she remembers. “I went above and beyond my schoolwork requirements and would seek out complex math problems to solve from textbooks ahead of my grade.” By the time she started earning her Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of Missouri, Columbia, aced all of her calculus classes. As a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas and many other states, Nemati served as a lead electrical engi-
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lthough Old Parkland Campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, its recent addition of 334,000sf of master-planned, Class A office space doesn’t betray that distinction. While the site is deeply bound to its Dallas roots, the four new buildings, rich in architectural elements and a 30-piece exterior art installation, pay tribute to national history throughout the campus. Completed in October by The Beck Group for client Crow Holdings, The Old Parkland West Campus addition includes four landmark buildings: Commonwealth Hall, the copper-domed Parkland Hall, Oak Lawn Hall, and the Monticelloinspired Pavilion. Although each is grand in scale, the four buildings are in close proximity to each other to promote tenant interaction. “From a design standpoint, we went through several iterations of what the buildings could look like,” Ed McGonigle, Beck Group’s principal in charge,
neer and project manager for engineering firms in the Metroplex. But there was one problem she really wanted to tackle: Owning an MEP consulting firm. “My husband thought I was crazy crazy at first; I was drawing a good salary and benefits, he was an engineer working for other firms and we had two kids,” Nemati says, laughing. “So I told him to keep his job, just in case!” There was no need to worry. Within one year of Nemati founding MEP Consulting Engineers (MEPCE) in 1999, she was able to hire her first employees. “As a young female in a male dominated profession, I knew from the begincontinued on Page 17
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ixty-one years ago, Emanuel Mullet bought a small Mt. Eaton, OH garage door business and moved it to Mt. Hope, a nearby Amish community populated with craftspeople. The company, then called Wayne Door, has since evolved from its humble wood and manufacturing origins to embrace modern materials and wholesale. More change came when a Dalton International merger renamed the company and several acquisitions (including one by Overhead Door in 2009) established the company’s national presence. Through every transition, however, one thing stayed the same: Wayne Dalton would continue to emulate the
Amish community’s tight-knit nature. Wayne Dalton’s Lewisville, TX corporate office, which shares resources with Overhead Door, is the touchstone for the kind of unity Mullet appreciated in the Amish and envisioned for his company. “Wayne Dalton functions both through distribution centers and dealer direct business – we have over 60 sales centers and over 3,000 customers so it’s a pretty large operation,” Patrick Duffy, vice president of dealer sales for Wayne Dalton, explains. “[The corporate office] is a resource base for us, so we use this office to help drive a lot of the messaging that is going out to each and every facility continued on Page 18
History in the making
Parkland Hall’s Portugese marble column capitols of the Corinthian order and enormous cast stone elements made it the project’s most challenging building.
says. “Obviously, the campus being of a historic nature was very important to the owners. With a local architect here in Dallas, we started studying campuses on the east coast, particularly the University of Virginia. We studied a lot of Thomas Jefferson’s architectural works, including Monticello and Poplar Forest, which was his summer retreat. Our goal was not to mimic the historic architecture, but it was to derive inspiration from it and to apply it to this campus.” The new buildings’ materials and style have been carefully crafted to match that of the original hospital. Simply selecting and approving the brick color and manufacturer, as well as the rake of the mortar joints, required time. A North Carolina brick company that hand makes and sand-sets bricks in a wood-mold box accomplished the look the team wanted. “There is a desire for this building not to look like it’s a brand new building, that continued on Page 17