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Delta 3 Engineering buys Southwest Design
Delta 3 5
Delta 3 owners (from left) Bart Nies, Dan Dreessens and Scott Chyko are pictured with Southwest Design Associates partners J. Steven Swift and Ron Tessmann.

Delta 3 Engineering of Platteville is buying Southwest Design Associates of Platteville to expand the engineering firm’s services.

Three of four of Southwest Design’s employees, including the two partners, are coming to Delta 3, while the Southwest Design building, originally the Platteville Public Library, is now for sale.

The acquisition was signed Dec. 23, but becomes official Thursday.

Delta 3 vice president Bart Nies said the acquisition “increases efficiency for our building and architectural services,” and “adds employees to cover our workload, hopefully more workload.”

“Some of the areas Southwest Design used to sub-consult with, Delta 3 covers those areas,” said Delta 3 vice president Dan Dreessens. “It’s all under one house, and I think that’s one reason why this works so well.”

Delta 3’s services include civil and municipal engineering, structural engineering, facility design, land development, grant writing and financial assistance, planning, surveying, Computer Aided Drafting and geotechnical engineering. Owners Scott Chyko, Nies and Dreessens are all UW–Platteville graduates.

Delta 3 does about 150 building projects a year, while Southwest Design did about 40 projects per year. Delta 3’s customer base includes 40 municipalities and 75 businesses, including contractors and developers.

“Some of the areas they’re in, it allows us to expand as far as market service,” said Chyko, Delta 3’s president, naming government housing.

Delta 3’s employee base of 23 will have added to it Southwest Design partners Ron Tessmann, an engineer, and J. Steven Swift, an architect, as well as CAD technician Jeff Leibold.

“I’m 62 and a little bit,” said Tessmann, Southwest Design’s president since 2007. “I had a couple health issues, and it was time.”

Southwest Design’s building, which opened in 1914, was originally the Platteville Public Library. The company was started in 1973 when “four or five UW professors saw the need in this part of the state,” said Tessmann. The professors worked out of their homes until moving to the former library in 1980.

Southwest Design’s building is now for sale.