The following is a guest post by Bony R. Dawood, PE President of Dawood Engineering with locations across the Commonwealth as well as other parts of the country. Below he discusses the impact of Severance Tax on the company. You can follow Dawood Engineering on Twitter at @DawoodEngineers.
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Dawood Engineering is a 25 year old engineering consulting firm based in Harrisburg Pennsylvania with offices in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Sayre. Our employees provide design, survey, and consulting services to highway/bridge projects with PennDOT, represent local municipalities, and develop new communities.
In 2008, Dawood Engineering was facing the same dilemma that all businesses faced when the Recession loomed. Because half of our business was involved directly in Commercial and Residential development, we faced a particularly gloomy outlook. The boom in Marcellus could not have come at a better time for our company and our community. The transition of existing staff and hiring new employees allowed us to expand from an 85 person company to a company with over 200 employees.
The energy industry in Pennsylvania is not some nameless, faceless company from out of town. It is companies like Dawood Engineering. We are your neighbors. Our kids go to school together. We designed the bridge you commute across everyday, the neighborhoods you live in, the wellpads that produce gas to heat your home, and the pipelines that bring it there.
Dawood is proud to be a Pennsylvania company. We pay income taxes, payroll taxes, sales & use taxes. We invest the profits of our business back into our business. Our employees earn family-sustaining wages and are your constituents and taxpayers themselves. They work hard, often working overtime, traveling across the state and the country. We are proud of every one of them because they are dedicated to serving our clients and doing their jobs the right way. We want to keep every one of them employed, and want to hire more people just like them.
We hope the PA legislature understands this, votes down a new tax on the industry, and helps us continue to build a better future.
Bony R. DawoodPresident of Dawood Engineering, Inc.
