L-R: Steve Rice and David Fergus

Don’t try to tell Steve Rice there’s anything wrong with the economy.

For Rice and his business partner, Dave Fergus, it’s been nothing but growth, growth, growth at their Bremerton architectural firm, Rice Fergus Architects.

“Our gross has gone beyond $2 million in services per year, which is absolutely astounding to me, considering where we started,” chuckles Rice, who launched his company in 1987. “I didn’t make a dime in the third month of business. Now, we regularly have 40 to 60 projects going at a time.”

Business had picked up enough by 1990 for Rice to hire another architect, Greg Belding, and take on Fergus as a partner. Today, the firm has more than enough work to keep its 15 employees busy. Rice, 45, and Fergus, 42, plan to welcome another partner on board next month.

Although the times – not to mention revenues – have changed over the years, one thing has remained the same: the company’s focus on community-services projects.

“It’s how you start a small firm in a small community,” says Rice. “We think it’s still important that, if a member of our community needs to have a funeral home or a bank, that person doesn’t need to leave the community to find top-quality design services.”

Although Rice Fergus does some residential work, its specialty lies more in the realm of fire stations, senior housing, religious facilities, healthcare centers, etc.

“We’ve done fire stations all up and down Kitsap County,” notes Rice. The firm’s biggest current project is the Kitsap County Emergency Services Readiness Center, a whopping $17 million, 10-year project on 40 acres in Bremerton that will include training facilities for the National Guard as well as for fire and emergency personnel from all over the county. Already completed is the $1 million training tower, designed to take years of intentional abuse: fires, flooding and obstacles. Just the sort of thing emergency workers would encounter in real-life situations.

This focus on community buildings has served to shield Rice Fergus from a flagging economy.

“We do probably 70-75 percent public projects, so the private side hasn’t been a large percentage of our work. We haven’t had a slowdown in our workload since 1994. It continues to grow every year. We’re now competing for and winning projects outside Kitsap County.”

Those include a new fire station for the city of Renton, a Seattle’s Best Coffee shop in Ballard, and a multi-phase Catholic parish complex for Holy Disciples in Puyallup.

Rice’s favorite part of the job? Getting to have his thumbs in a lot of pies.

“One of the nice things about a small practice like this is you do get to work on a variety of projects,” says Rice. “The satisfaction comes from more places than it did before. As the leader of the firm, I still get to be involved in the design, but also in training the staff and staying involved in the community.

“I’ve even,” he quips, “been known to sweep the sidewalk in front of my building.”

Both Rice and Fergus are native Northwesterners, the former hailing from Tacoma and Gig Harbor; the latter from Portland. Rice graduated from University of Washington with a bachelor’s in environmental design in 1978 and a master’s in architecture in 1982. Fergus earned his bachelor’s in architecture from University of Nebraska in 1981, and his master’s in architecture from UW in 1984.

They’re both family men, with three children each and wives who are involved in – or studying toward – careers in teaching. Rice and his wife, Terri, are both Scout leaders. He does lots of volunteer work for the school district and is president of the Bremerton Rotary Club.

For such a busy man, Rice never forgets to take care of what he considers his Number. 1 resource – the employees who help make his business successful. He feels so strongly about that, it’s become his company philosophy. “Our first value isn’t about service or design, it’s about being a good place to work. That makes everything else fall into place. Dave and I have made it a practice to only hire people who are smart and team players, then the other things, of course, follow – good client service and service to the community.”

The feeling is obviously mutual; Rice’s staff recently decided to nominate both Rice and Fergus for the annual Business Leader Award presented by the Kitsap Business Journal.

“We wanted to recognize them for their commitment to the community and for making this a great place to work,” explains Monica Blackwood, the firm’s business-development manager.

For Rice, the real reward is walking through the doors of his flourishing business every day.

“If you grow up as a kid interested in this kind of thing and follow your dreams, it’s easier to go to work, because you love your job.”.