Our History

After Doug’s sudden passing in 1987, Rory Rottschalk, already a prominent leader of Culp & Tanner’s engineering staff, assumed the helm of the blossoming northern California office. Deeply rooted in the company’s culture of service and client-centered design, Rory steered the company into the Design-Build world beginning in 1988 – a move the reflected a desire to align the company’s strong technical expertise with efficient, constructable buildings. Under Rory’s leadership, Culp & Tanner experienced decades of strength and notoriety, designing and completing a vast variety of projects around the world, including blast doors in Greece, hangars in Guam, the 45-story Rio casino tower in Las Vegas and even the 20,000-stall Universal Studios parking garage in Orlando (visible from space!!).

In 2021, after 34 years of service to C&T, Rory passed the leadership torch over to Darren King, a 19-year veteran of Culp & Tanner. From the day he started in 2002, Darren has been steadfast in his commitment to relationships, both internal and external. “It can be so easy to get focused on the numbers, the math, the design, that the reason behind it all gets lost. After all, at the very root of what we do, are people. From the staff here at C&T, to our design and construction partners, to the clients whose structures we are designing. People. While we remain focused on quality design as has been our company culture for decades, we are unrelenting in our service and relationship-first approach to engineering. It has been, and will continue to be, about the people."