Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring Inc. was founded in 1994 by Shannon Creson and Dave Shupe, operating as a small family business in northern California. Today, the company is an industry leader, specializing in geotechnical construction. Asked how the company has reached the pinnacle of its sector, Darin Gossett, Chief Operating Officer at Drill Tech explained, “Drill Tech combines forward-thinking leadership, innovation, highly intelligent staff in the field and office, and a never-say-die work ethic to all its projects and efforts.” These efforts of course, could not be achieved without a dedicated team. For Gossett, the capability of performing everything in-house is a major element in the company’s success. “Dedicated staff strive for excellence in all that they do for the company, [and] in-house engineering is a big key to Drill Tech’s success.”
The company provides a range of services including engineering design and consultation for the installation of earth retention systems, foundation support, underpinning systems, landslide stabilizations, ground treatments, new tunnels and shafts, tunnel retrofits, marine construction services, and dewatering systems. Drill Tech also offers a full turn-key service. With a team made up of civil engineers and construction managers it can support clients’ projects from inception to the completed project. Gossett explained: “These managers provide engineering support services in-house throughout the lifecycle of the projects.”
This ability to go beyond expectations is truly what sets the company apart from its competitors. For Gossett, providing a suite of services give its customers a rich experience that builds long-term relationships. “The diversity of the scopes of work that we are able to provide help us be more self-sufficient than perhaps our competition. It’s one of our strengths – where there’s a need, we pivot, we can do something that’s outside of the base scope of work to keep the job moving forward, preventing the owner or our client from having to outsource it and be burdened with the time it takes to engage somebody else.”
In the early days, the company grew by “working tirelessly in the field by day and in the office at night,” Gossett said. This dedication led to sustained growth and expansion due to the growing demand for its services. “What started as a small, home-grown business with a handful of employees has blossomed to a large company operating across the continental United States with over 500 employees and offices in northern California, southern California, Nevada, Washington, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, and Maryland.”
“Drill Tech has shown great resilience to economic change.”
While the company has enjoyed success, it didn’t come without challenges. Gossett explained how its adaptable approach and the in-house ability to pivot when necessary has become an invaluable tool for the company. “As market conditions change over the years, construction companies have to adapt to survive. Drill Tech has embraced a constant state of change and evolution since its inception. The owners recognize that growth represents survival and success. Growth comes through advancements in our capabilities, we cannot expand our capabilities without taking on risks to try new things, to learn new techniques, and to be willing to take on the financial burden associated with a learning curve.”
During the economic recession from 2008 to 2010 for example, the founders hired project managers. This foresight allowed the company to expand when the recovery finally came. As Gossett shares, this move enabled to company to maintain its trajectory and consolidate in preparation for the next phase. “In its 30-year history, Drill Tech has grown steadily with one exception. During the recession from 2008 to 2010, Drill Tech didn’t grow, but it didn’t shrink either. Drill Tech expanded its management team which propelled it forward by leaps and bounds coming out of 2010. During the Covid pandemic, for instance, Drill Tech grew in volume.”
The company has completed a long list of successful projects, including the Anderson Dam and Orinda WTP. Addressing why these two projects stand out, Gossett noted, “They stand out for their complexity but also the success that we’re achieving.” The Anderson Dam project was originally awarded for $161 million and is being completed for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Brian Harris, General Manager of the Mining & Tunneling Division at Drill Tech described it as a “seismic retrofit” of the already existing dam outside of Morgan Hill, CA. Santa Clara Valley Water District is the primary water supply entity for most of Silicon Valley.
Harris explained, “The goal of the project was to replace the dam seismically, retrofit the dam and through that, they’re going to install a new water supply system so that they can have a different outlet for future piping and distribution into their system.”
For phase one, the company was the tunnelling subcontractor on the project, with responsibilities including portal construction with high-capacity ground anchors, shotcrete and shoring, along with large-capacity foundation systems for future outlet buildings. The company also drove around 1200 feet of tunnel around the existing dam.
Despite it being a complex project, Harris explains how the company’s knowledge base allowed it to navigate any challenges that arose. “Our expertise mitigated a lot of risks; we’ve done work for several decades in the area and we have knowledge of how the geology behaves and how the operations are made to be efficient. We did very well on the excavation – that is normally a fairly high-risk item for any tunnelling job, especially this one being that it was adjacent to an existing dam that was not taken out of service – it was in service the entire time and working on the job.”
The Orinda Water Treatment Plant is owned by the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Serving the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is the “crown jewel” of the system, according to Mike Cox, Senior Project Manager at Drill Tech. For this project — which was awarded in the neighborhood of 230 million — the company worked on an upgrade to the water treatment plant and upgrading the treatment and piping systems. Cox explained, “There’s a huge mechanical and electrical component to the work. The scope of work that Drill Tech is performing on that job boils down to shoring and foundations – this project touches on just about every type of shoring and foundation scope that we perform.”
The team drilled and installed a secant pile cut-off wall for a shoring perimeter and a 65-foot-deep excavation. It also installed around 400 tiebacks and internal bracing in one of the larger pits, along with 175 tie-downs as part of the 60-foot-deep excavation to prevent buoyancy. Cox explained that Drill Tech is currently carrying out demolition at the port of the existing structures to maintain the majority of the structure. “That is pretty complicated in terms of supporting structures that are 75 to 100 years old, with steel bracing and demolishing them in a safe way so that they can be reused and upgraded to include the new piping.”
The project is a prime example of the high-level of skills the company has at its disposal. With work being carried out inside an operational water treatment plant, the team must ensure that plant operations are not impacted. Cox added: “There’s a lot of very stringent requirements in the design of the shoring and the demolition plan to make sure that the plant remains operational and that the working parts of the plant aren’t damaged during construction.”
With all this in mind, it is unsurprising that there is more growth on the horizon for Drill Tech in the coming months. Gossett goes on to explain that building its in-house team is a vital element of this trajectory. “Drill Tech will continue to grow by adding high-quality staff, looking for potential key acquisitions, and being willing to be bold in pursuit of new scopes of work that further diversify our value to the construction community.”
With high quality and innovation, the company continues to have new opportunities to expand operations across the United States and will continue to interact with new companies, creating opportunities for new partnerships. However, as Gossett shares, this growth could not be achieved without its team. “Drill Tech has shown great resilience to economic change. Growth may be measured in gross revenue or number of projects completed per year, however, internally, growth is measured by the number of key staff members employed at the company. Project managers and the supporting staff in the office and field are the link to the volume of business run at Drill Tech – Drill Tech doesn’t earn new business and then find staff to support the work, it hires high quality staff to support growth. New staff represent gross revenue growth.”
