About Our Firm:

In 1946, Frederick J. Converse started our present firm which has progressed from a sole proprietorship to a partnership, and now to an employee owned company with 10 national locations and over 300 employees.  Through the decades, we have expanded our services, and today providea focused array of services that include geotechnical engineering, materials testing/field services, environmental sciences, water resources management/protection and occupational/environmental health and safety.

The 1936 International Conference on Soils Mechanics and Foundation Engineering launched soil mechanics, today known as geotechnical engineering, as a recognized discipline of civil engineering. The theoretical and experimental work of the men pictured provided the foundation of modern geotechnical engineering. Our founder (no. 15) Fred J. Converse (then a professor at Caltech) is credited mostly with work on piling engineering for deep foundations. Karl Terzaghi (no. 46) is mostly remembered for propounding the concept of effective stress that controls soil behavior. Arthur Casagrande (no.76) gained fame for developing the engineering soil classification system (now ASTM 2487). Donald Burmister (no. 129) is credited with developing an excellent soil identification system and predicting engineering properties based on index properties. F.A. Marston (no. 16) is credited with the theory of the response of buried pipelines to loading.

With Corporate Headquarters in Monrovia, California, Converse maintains ten permanent offices located in California (Costa Mesa, Monrovia, Redlands, and Sacramento); Nevada (Elko, Las Vegas and Reno); Arizona (Phoenix); New Jersey (Parsippany); and, Pennsylvania (State College).  We employ professionals with specialized training in engineering, geology, hydrogeology, environmental sciences, geotechnical drilling, field and materials testing, and other disciplines.

 
About our Founder:

Frederick J. Converse began his engineering career in 1916 as an instructor of Engineering in Rochester, New York.  After spending a couple of years with the U.S. Bureau of Aircraft Production doing physical testing of aircraft parts, then serving in the military providing engineering services for military facilities and war related projects throughout the western United States, Mr. Converse worked as a Design Engineer for the Los Angeles City Bureau of Power & Light.  In 1920 Mr. Converse began teaching Civil Engineering for the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

While continuing to teach at Cal Tech, Mr. Converse established a partnership with R.V. Labarre in 1933; became a sole proprietor in 1936; established a partnership in 1940 with Donald R. Warren; then began our present firm in 1946.Throughout his working years, Mr. Converse was intrigued by soil and foundation engineering services, and some say his name was synonymous with “soils engineering”.Not only was Frederick Converse known for his enthusiasm for soils and foundation engineering, his friends and acquaintances knew him particularly well as a “gentleman”.