Engineered for the rebound

Recessions have a way of clearing a path for entrepreneurs.

Consider Ron Waldrop, a civil engineer who started out as a solo practitioner in Bonita Springs in 2000. Today, Waldrop Engineering has 40 employees stretching from Pasco County north of Tampa to Collier County in the south.

Although he started the civil-engineering business at the start of the real estate boom, Waldrop was careful never to overextend himself. “We stayed smaller and true to who we were,” Waldrop says.