The civil engineers and designers in the Kennewick office of J-U-B Engineers have lent their expertise to almost every aspect of the locally-built environment.

They work on water and wastewater plants, roads and bridges, aviation projects, site development and plenty more.

And now, for the first time since the Kennewick office opened near West Clearwater and Highway 395 in 1977, it has worked on project for itself.

In June, J-U-B moved to a custom built, 14,000-square-foot office at 3611 S. Zintel Way, next to the Zintel Canyon Dam above Canyon Lakes in western Kennewick.

It was a welcome move for the Kennewick office, which has 47 of Boise-based J-U-B’s 440 employees, making it one of the largest in the company’s network of 20 offices in seven states, including Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

“We’ve been in the same spot the whole time,” said Alex Fazzari, area manager.

The new office is about two miles from the original J-U-B location, a deliberate choice Fazzari said was meant to avoid disrupting the team’s commuting patterns. The $4.5 million project was developed by REA Commercial Inc., which will sell it to J-U-B this summer.

Fazzari said the firm had plenty of input to ensure it got the building it wanted. The crew of engineers, surveyors and more work across departments and collaborate. That necessitated a single-story building because, as Fazzari said, a multi-story building would be an “impediment” to work.

The new space has private offices, cubicles, conference rooms and a break room with a microwave, refrigerator, patio and views of the Horse Heaven Hills.

The Kennewick J-U-B crew consists of numerous teams that focus on different types of projects, from city roads and sewer plants to airport updates and commercial irrigation systems.

Its highest profile project at the moment is Pasco’s $40 million Lewis Street overpass, which broke ground in June and will wrap in late 2023. The J-U-B transportation group designed the complicated bridge, which will carry Lewis Street over the Pasco railroad tracks instead of its current route through a narrow tunnel beneath.

The new bridge has travel lanes for vehicles as well as pedestrian and bicycle amenities and is viewed as a major connection reuniting east Pasco with downtown.

The same group was part of the design team for Richland’s new $38 million Duportail Bridge, although it was not the lead. It designed Kennewick’s first roundabout, at South Union and West 27th Street, to reduce the number of accidents occurring when nearby Southridge High School let out each day.

Another group focuses on municipal water and wastewater projects for the cities of Kennewick, Pasco, Richland, West Richland, College Place and Walla Walla.

The office also, unique among its J-U-B peers, is busy with agriculture work, designing and engineering irrigation and water systems for large farms and agriculture processing firms.

It has an aviation group, a property and construction management group and a GIS mapping and asset management unit that helps clients track and monitor key infrastructure such as buried water and sewer lines. Its GIS system informs engineers of the age and status of lines, which lets clients prioritize their public works projects.

Fazzari said the Kennewick office is fortunate that most of the work serves clients within the region rather than traveling to distant sites. This means employees can point out their work to family and friends, whether it is a water tank, an offramp or a new bridge.

“We have such a great economy in the Tri-Cities and there’s so much to do, we pretty much focus here,” he said. “It’s really rewarding to practice civil engineering at home.”

J-U-B’s local phone number is unchanged: 509-783-2144.