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A chance meeting at a convention for professional engineers changed the course of Edwin T. Dean’s career.

At that event, in the late 1990s, Dean met Levon Nishkian. That encounter led to creation of a new engineering office 鈥� Nishkian Dean 鈥� in Portland.

The office, which celebrated its 15th anniversary last year, traces its roots back to San Francisco, where an engineer named Leon Nishkian opened an engineering company in 1919. Under his leadership, the firm worked on nearly 1,600 projects, including the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a host of familiar landmarks and buildings throughout the area.

When Leon Nishkian died in 1947, his son, Byron, assumed the helm and continued the firm’s expansion. Leon’s grandson, Levon, became president of the firm in 1981. Eight years later he showed his mettle by reopening his family’s firm merely days after the Loma Prieta earthquake.

By the time Levon Nishkian and Dean decided to open a Portland location, the firm had become well-known; it had worked on projects across the country.

Under the leadership of Dean, the Portland office has continued its parent company’s standard of excellence on projects that range from seismic rehabilitations to some for NASA’s aerospace program. Projects handled by the Portland firm have received Hammurabi Awards for the East Multnomah County Courthouse and the McDonald West Building, a 2007 Oregon Engineering Excellence Grand Award, and a 2007 National Recognition Award for the massive LC41 door replacement at Cape Canaveral to accommodate the world’s largest rocket.

The Nishkian group includes partnerships in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Bozeman, Mont. Collectively, they have worked on more than 8,000 projects since the firm was established.

鈥淟ike any firm in our industry, it starts with developing effective relationships with our clients,鈥� Dean said. 鈥淲e have an understanding of the needs of our clients in the Portland (area), but while each office operates independently, we consult with each other as we need to.聽Most of what we do is in the Portland area, but we have projects all over the country.

鈥淐ollaboration is a valuable resource. It expands the range of projects that we can work on.鈥�