Khaled Shawish, PE - Principal
In 2000, when NGA was incepted, I became the Engineer of Record and manager of our Woodinville office. Since then we have evolved and grown into one of the leading, mid-size geotechnical firms in Washington specializing not only in the small residential projects that gave us our start, but also highly advanced and technical municipal and development projects. Our success is wholly due to the people who work here. Our people are of the highest caliber and integrity and they impress me and make me proud every day.
My company is successful because of the individuals surrounding me; I am who I am because of them. It is true I am a first generation immigrant, born on a refugee camp, where education held the only promise of a better future. I pursued a degree in engineering, as it satisfied my curious mind and was later inspired into the Geotechnical specialty by a bright young professor with a PhD from UC Davis who had found himself teaching at the University of Jordan in Amman. Geotechs were not, are not, used where I grew up and I knew I would have to travel outside my borders to thrive and that is how I ended up in Washington state. As I earned my master’s degree in Pullman, WA, it became clear to me that this was the perfect environment for my geotechnical aspirations, with the complex topographies, seismicity, and stunning beauty of a landscape riddled with mountains, rivers and coastlines. Partnered with my love of mountaineering, climbing, hiking and a life straddling the outdoors, it turns out Geotech was the, albeit unlikely, perfect career for me.
My day to day work, while riddled with report writing and review, is extremely satisfying in the diversity it provides and the opportunity to flex my engineering and design muscles in new ways with unique challenges presented with every project. Even after 25 years, I am still learning every day from the engineering challenges I am presented with and from my amazing team. I garner a tremendous amount of satisfaction from seeing satisfied clients who had come to us with what they thought was impossible situations and leave with implemented solutions. I guess you could say that reflects one of my core values perfectly; be steadfast, work hard, and see things through to the finish.
I come from a very large family and have a wife and four kids of my own. Spending time with them is invaluable to me and aside from going to work am rarely away from them. I love teaching my daughters to embrace the STEM fields and challenge societal norms. I love taking my son fishing and teaching my girls to drive the tractor, build sheds and put in a hard day’s work on our farm homestead. I love spending the evening cooking with them and hopefully teaching them to savor the simple and unbeatable pleasure of spending a few hours enjoying a made from scratch meal with family and friends.
Contact Khal at (425) 523-8626, or via email below: