Portland, Ore.-based Century West Engineering Corp., which operates its largest office in Spokane Valley, has grown steadily over the last seven years by staying close to its roots after undergoing some significant pruning, says Dennis Fuller, the company's president.

Century West is projecting revenues of $6 million companywide this year, up from $4 million in 2004, when its restructuring efforts started to pay off, says Fuller, who's based here. The increase has been fairly steady in recent years, although the largest single-year increase is expected this year. Revenues were $5.5 million in 2010, he says.

In the Valley, Century West occupies about 19,000 square feet of leased space—the entire second floor of a three-story building—at 1825 N. Hutchinson, just northwest of the Interstate 90-Argonne Road interchange.

The company now has a staff of 45 people, including 20 at its Spokane Valley office, where its workforce has grown by five people in the last year, says Fuller. The company has nine engineers on its staff here, he says, up from six a year ago, making it the largest of the company's five offices in terms of staff size, he says.

"We're smaller than we were 10 years ago, but we're more profitable," Fuller says about the company. "This year is our best financially in 15 years."

At its peak employment, Century West had a staff of more than 130 people, but bogged down under its own over-diversification in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fuller says.

"We were scattered in our services," he says. "We needed to focus on what we're good at."

The company retrenched its engineering emphasis on municipal and aviation projects, shedding its noncore divisions, including its materials and soils testing labs, he says.

Fuller says its strengths in municipal projects include assessing, planning, designing, and overseeing construction of water distribution systems, wastewater and stormwater treatment plants, and other civil infrastructure and utility improvements.

In the aviation field, Century West specializes in similar responsibilities over plans, designs, and construction of runways, airfield lighting systems, security fencing, and access roads, he says.

Back when the company refocused on its strengths, it redefined its leadership teams in each office, assigning each team areas of emphasis to be handled companywide, rather than having management duplicate duties within each office, Fuller says.

"We took the people in the top layer and reshuffled their duties so they had overall responsibilities," he says. "It's a huge shift in how we do business and market ourselves."

For instance, one leadership team is responsible for marketing municipal projects, another markets business development and aviation, and a third handles overall operations of the company.

Century West opened its first Spokane office in 1979, some 20 years before moving to its Spokane Valley location. Fuller, who started working for Century West in 1984, moved here in 1987 from the company's former Tri-Cities office. He was named president of the company six years ago.

In October, Century West opened its North Idaho office with one engineer, at 1110 W. Park Place, in Coeur d'Alene.

Its other offices are in Ellensburg, Wash.; Portland; and Bend, Ore., where it was founded in 1969.

Fuller says he sees a lot of room for growth for the Coeur d'Alene office.

"When the economy comes back, Coeur d'Alene and much of North Idaho and western Montana will be a good target market," he says.

Century West's goal is to grow enough business to increase the Coeur d'Alene office staff to five people in the next two to three years, he says, adding, "Our ultimate target is to have a staff 15 to 20 people there."

One key to Century West's recent success is its experience in helping its clients secure project funding.

"We're successful in the Spokane office, and we're starting to do more in Oregon." Fuller says.

While helping clients find funding helps ensure that projects can move forward, grant writing wasn't something he picked up in engineering school, he says.

"We developed expertise in-house," Fuller says. "We went to funding agencies to figure out what constitutes good applications."

Now, Century West has four or five funding applications pending, he says.

A new water reclamation plant in Airway Heights is a prime example of a project that relied on funding that Century West helped the city on the West Plains secure. Nearly half of the $42 million project was funded through federal stimulus dollars, he says.

The plant, which started processing wastewater earlier this month, will produce treated water that can be reused for certain applications, such as irrigation and select industrial uses. Any treated water that's not reused will be discharged into the aquifer.

"It's the only project like it in the state of Washington," Fuller says.

The plant, which is expected to ramp up to full operations within a few months, will eliminate Airway Heights' reliance on the wastewater treatment plant in Spokane that discharges treated wastewater into the Spokane River.

The water that the city reuses also will reduce the amount it will have to withdraw from the aquifer. The city, however, eventually will be able to reclaim the amount of water that it discharges into the aquifer without having to obtain additional water rights, he says.

"We're still working those details out with the state Department of Ecology," Fuller says.

Companywide, about 60 percent of Century West's projects are municipal, and most of the remaining work is aviation related.

Century West's Ellensburg and Portland offices handle the largest shares of the company's aviation projects, Fuller says.

In the Spokane Valley office, however, only about 15 percent of its business is aviation related.

One of its most recent Inland Northwest aviation projects was improvements at the Willard Field Airport, in Tekoa, Wash., where upgrades were necessary to meet Federal Aviation Administration standards and prepare for growth and development. The project was funded primarily through a state grant.

While Fuller says a surge of federal stimulus dollars has crested, he's seeing preliminary signs of a change in the economic current.

"We're doing a lot of development reviews for the city of Airway Heights and the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District," he says. "A lot of municipal clients rely on development and growth to generate projects."