Garver brings employees from 12 states to Little Rock, announces leadership change

LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Garver brought most of its 700 full-time employees to Little Rock last week to celebrate its centennial year, and it used the occasion to announce it is being led by a new CEO.

Brock Hoskins, who was president, is now president and CEO, while former CEO Dan Williams is now chairman emeritus.

The engineering firm’s changeover became effective Thursday, Oct. 17. It was announced that evening at the Garver Summit’s closing event, the State of the Firm and Centennial Celebration at the First Security Amphitheater.

The company previously had announced the move would occur as part of its succession plan. Williams is retiring in December.

Garver began hosting the annual summits in 2011 but stopped bringing everyone to Little Rock in 2014 as the firm grew. This year it paid for 648 full-time employees to attend. Employees could participate in professional development sessions or in about 35 excursions.

The firm is enjoying a period of rapid growth and acquisition, having hired 193 full-time employees this year through September while expanding to 31 offices in 12 states.

“A lot of offices had to lock their doors because everybody was coming here,” said Guy Choate, communications team manager.

The company set two goals in 2015 to achieve by 2019, Williams announced at the State of the Firm event. One was reaching $100 million in revenues. It achieved that goal in 2017 and is on pace this year to reach $150 million.

The other was to be ranked in the top 125 among Engineering News-Record magazine’s top design firms based on revenues. In 2015, Garver was 192. Describing it as an ambitious goal, Williams said the firm’s ranking in April 2019 was 138. While it fell short, it did climb 54 spots in four years. And he pointed out that current rankings are based on previous year’s revenues, so the firm might reach its goal next year.

Garver also hoped to be in the top 25 aviation firms and was ranked number 22 in 2017 and number 19 in 2019. It was number 24 in a regional environmental ranking that includes Arkansas along with Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

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