Highlands Chamber director Kaye McHan with Tom and Robyn Hessling at Mountain Construction Engineering’s ribbon cutting.
Though Tom Hessling has been in Highlands for several years, his company, Mountain Construction Engineering has just joined the Highlands Chamber of Commerce.
Mountain Construction Engineering specializes in second opinion home inspections and offers an array of residential engineering services including structural repair solutions and residential construction management.
“More than half of the work I do is owner’s representation on new home construction,” Hessling said. “Business has been booming lately, but the problem is the supply chain. Everything is in order, but we can’t get materials and labor to do it. It’s a perfect storm.”
During COVID-19, Hessling said they were busy as ever.
“That was my second year in business,” Hessling said. “We were just getting off of the ground, but we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The first year, you try and make investment after investment and after the third year, that’s when you start making a profit, but we expected that.”
Hessling said he has been practicing engineering for the past 37 years both nationally and globally. He is the recipient of multiple national awards, and his portfolio includes some of the nation’s most challenging infrastructure projects.
“I was doing some stuff part time, but I eventually left all of that and now I am doing this full-time,” Hessling said.
15 years ago, Hessling, his wife and children would visit his father-in-law in Sapphire, and he said they would joke about retiring here on the Plateau.
“Eventually, when my youngest went away for college, we did move up here,” Hessling said. “We bought a home just before she left for college, and we moved here shortly after. We absolutely love it up here. I said to my wife that we have lived all the way across the country and back, and this is the final resting place.”
When Hessling was putting together Mountain Construction Engineering he and his team did a market analysis to pinpoint the strongest needs of the area.
“We found that the area’s strongest need was reactionary engineering,” Hessling said. “The market told us that there were very few engineers in the area and of the few, they were very, very busy. We went into the market with the notion of the day you call, we will answer the day after at the latest.”
Hessling is a licensed professional engineer in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Virginia, Texas, Maryland, and North Carolina. His company serves Lake Toxaway, Sapphire, Cashiers, Highlands, Glenville and Brevard.
For more information on Mountain Construction Engineering, visit mountain-ce.com.
- By Christopher Lugo