The Spokane office of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins Inc., a Great Falls, Mont.-based engineering firm, has been rustling up business across Eastern Washington, and especially in more rural areas.


Currently, the firm has 87 projects under way, the most business activity its seen since the early 1990s, says Cliff Morey, regional manager.


Many of those projects are in smaller, outlying communities, he says.


Our bread and butter is in municipal work in small communities, says Morey, who adds that he grew up in a small town. The Spokane office of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins also does work on a daily basis in larger communities where it has a working relationship with engineers from those communities, he says.


Yet, in small communities they let (our) engineers be the engineers, Morey says.


Each year we (in Spokane) generate from $1 million to $1.25 million in engineering-fee volume, he says.


Two of the biggest projects TD&H has on the drawing board arent even among the 87 projects it has signed contracts for.


One of those projects, involving the design of a roughly $2 million water treatment plant at Ione, Wash., in Pend Oreille County, should be under contract within the next month, says Morey. He says the companys usual approach of providing surveyors, designing the project, finding contractors, and administering the project will be employed there.


The other about $1 million project involves reconstruction of Main Street, in Bridgeport, Wash., on the Columbia River west of Spokane in Douglas County.


We are that citys on-call services engineer, Morey says. He adds that street work there will probably happen in the next couple years. TD&H also is doing smaller well analysis and sewer-capacity analysis studies for Bridgeport, he says.


In Ferry County, near the town of Curlew, the company is doing engineering work on rehabilitation projects on two bridges that span the Kettle River. One historic bridge will be restored at a cost of about $1.3 million, and the second bridge will be restored at a cost of about $350,000, says Morey.


In the town of Wilbur, west of Spokane in Lincoln County, the engineering firm is designing a $500,000 reconstruction project on Pope Avenue. Plans there are to repair that arterial and correct drainage and sidewalk problems, he says.


In Sprague, Wash., Thomas, Dean & Hoskins is working with the Spokane office of Redmond, Wash.-based GeoEngineers Inc. on a $300,000 environmental gas station cleanup on the east end of Main Street, Morey says.


In Farmington, Wash., near the Washington-Idaho border southeast of Spokane, TD&H is designing and overseeing the construction of a sewer lift in a $300,000 project in that Whitman County town.


On the Eastern Washington University campus, in Cheney, TD&H is doing engineering work on improvements on a water main that stretches several blocks from C Street to Fifth Street, Morey says. That work will be done next spring and summer at an estimated cost of $200,000, he says.


The Spokane office of Thomas, Dean & Hoskins has 10 full-time and four part-time employees, Morey says.


In addition to its office here, Thomas, Dean & Hoskins has four locations in Montana and one in Coeur dAlene.