A Tradition of Innovation
KAPPA Surveying and Engineering, Inc. overcomes challenges through creativity
Based in La Mesa, Calif., KAPPA Surveying and Engineering, Inc. has provided services related to surveying and civil engineering in the San Diego region for nearly 40 years. During this time, the family-owned company has gained a reputation for developing innovative solutions to address challenging regulatory requirements and project-specific site constraints.
Rick Turner, KAPPA’s President and Chief Executive Officer, has been involved with the firm since 1979, when it was founded by his father, Allen Turner, a surveyor by trade, and a civil engineer named Jim Draper. Initially, Rick worked part time in the field, eventually becoming a full-time employee in 1987. Since 2004, he has served as President of the firm, which currently has 14 employees.
Growth Through Diversity
KAPPA’s offerings include land surveying, a full range of civil engineering services, cost-analysis engineering, grading plans and flood hazard evaluations. As for clients, the firm works with individual landowners, municipalities and land developers. One such client is Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres. KAPPA’s surveyors ensure that the baseball field at Petco Park, as well as fields used by other sports teams in this stadium, are laid out properly.
“We don’t pigeonhole ourselves into any one particular type of development or field,” Turner says. His staff handles “all varieties of work” pertaining to surveying and civil engineering, an approach that he says keeps his company “very active and very busy.” He adds, “It keeps you on your toes a lot. But it also keeps the work coming.”
Over time, KAPPA has experienced significant growth in terms of the number of projects it handles. In its first 20 years, KAPPA worked on approximately 800 jobs, Turner says. However, during the past 18 years, the firm has been involved with more than 2,400 projects.
Thriving on Change
In the San Diego region, the combination of changing market forces and stricter regulatory requirements has necessitated that KAPPA continuously adapt, says Bill Dick, the firm’s Director of Engineering. In terms of residential housing, for example, the focus has shifted as the market has matured. “We’re doing so much redevelopment infill work and much fewer raw land subdivisions,” Dick says.
The challenges differ somewhat depending on whether a project is located in a rural or urban setting, Turner says. In rural areas, regulations regarding the protection of certain bird and plant species must be followed, along with requirements pertaining to fire. “We’re in a big fire area,” Turner explains. “We have to take into consideration the fuel modification zones and wildland fire threats to a development.”
Whether located in a rural or urban area, all San Diego region development projects must comply with increasingly stringent requirements associated with managing stormwater quality and quantity. On average, the local stormwater requirements tend to change every three to five years, becoming more restrictive over time, Turner says. In the past, stormwater management meant controlling runoff entering and leaving a site to ensure it did not damage property onsite or downstream of the site. Now, to prevent erosion and decrease pollutant loadings in local waterways, measures also must be taken to retain more water onsite and to treat the runoff before it is released from the site, Turner says.
Perhaps most challenging is the requirement that a project be designed and constructed in such a fashion that it does not increase the amount of stormwater runoff as compared to that of the site in its natural condition. “It’s quite a restrictive requirement,” Turner says. Such mandates prove particularly challenging in urban areas in which high-density development is occurring on small lots, leaving little surface area for managing stormwater onsite. The solutions frequently require use of underground storage combined with other site uses.
In the face of this changing regulatory landscape, “we have to keep up with creative ideas and technology to make sure that we adhere to all the requirements,” Turner says. At the same time, KAPPA works to inform its customers of the significance of the requirements. “We spend a lot of time educating clients, because of the changing regulations,” he adds.
Uncommon Solutions
In a market where high real estate prices put a premium on land, KAPPA frequently must devise innovative solutions that comply with restrictive stormwater requirements while also facilitating additional uses of a property. “We search desperately for areas in which we can combine the uses while at the same time not hampering the development of a site,” Turner says.
As an example, he points to a residential project for which KAPPA designed a stormwater detention system beneath a basketball court. Below the court’s surface, five to six feet of gravel temporarily detain runoff that has been directed to the underground detention system from impervious surfaces elsewhere on the property. The stored water then flows slowly by gravity to an adjacent biotreatment area before leaving the property.
Similarly, on a recent multifamily residential project involving 10 adjoining units, KAPPA devised a stormwater management solution that entailed capturing runoff onsite beneath the parking area. The stored runoff then is pumped to a treatment system before it is discharged. Ideally, the KAPPA team would have preferred to treat the stormwater before detaining it, Turner says, but site limitations precluded this approach. That said, this solution improved upon the efforts of the engineering company that originally had been hired to design the project. “We were hired for a fresh look to develop a cost-saving, innovative solution,” Turner notes.
Coming Through for the Client
Along with frequently upgrading its software and computer systems to reflect the latest industry standards, KAPPA works with the agencies that must enforce the regulations to ensure a common interpretation of the rules, Dick says. At the same time, KAPPA collaborates with manufacturers of products used as part of drainage solutions to ensure that their products work as needed in the field. “We’re all looking at the same set of rules at the same time, working together to come up with solutions,” Dick says. “That’s why you see some of these unique solutions.”
Many stormwater management solutions require increased surface area not available for other uses, reducing available land and sometimes limiting the number of units to be constructed or affecting the location of roads or other infrastructure. As a result, KAPPA works with clients to develop such solutions at the beginning of the design process, rather than conducting these tasks on the back end of the design effort, Dick says. “We get involved much earlier than we used to,” he adds.
Ultimately, KAPPA relies on collaboration and leading-edge processes to develop the solutions that its customers require. “We pride ourselves on coming up with innovative ideas,” Turner says. “We’re coming up with these creative ideas for clients so that they can progress on their projects, instead of getting stymied or having to reduce the project.” Whatever the problem, he says, “there are always other ways around it.”