Kyle Church is among the soldiers whose civilian profession benefits his military career – and vice versa.
Church, senior project manager for Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina-based Terracon Consultants, also serves part time as an engineer officer in the Army Reserve, and recently returned from a nine-month deployment with CENTCOM.
He credits his employer with allowing him to focus on his duties as part of a specialized team of on-site engineers for CENTCOM, confident in the assurance that his projects back on the homefront will continue moving forward.
“Since I took the position with Terracon five years ago, I’ve been on active duty twice — once for deployment overseas and once for a six-month training stint,” he said. “I’ve worked at Terracon my entire professional career and my teammates in Raleigh have always been there for me, especially Mike Dail, Justin Fabriziani, R.S.M., and Michael Jordan.”
Support from the home team
According to Fabriziani, environmental department manager and senior associate, Terracon believes in the benefits of military service and in giving staff the opportunity to do whatever fulfills them.
“We don’t want it to be all Terracon all the time,” he said. “We understand that the most successful employees are those who can strike the right balance between what they do at Terracon and outside [the company]. We have a significant amount of veterans and active-duty reserve and Guard employees, and we want to do whatever we can to support them in their continued service and thank them for past service.”
Church said he appreciated the advance notice of his deployment last January, which gave him and his colleagues the opportunity to devise a feasible transition strategy.
“We executed a plan fairly early that shifted many of my duties to other employees,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues checked in biweekly until the transition was complete. “I was basically on PTO and working part time on an as-needed basis.”
Terracon also recognizes that Church is acquiring skills that are advanced for someone at his career stage.
“Kyle in particular has been a key member of our environmental department and a rising star since very early on in his Terracon career,” Fabriziani said. “He exemplifies our goal of being responsive and reliable and is always up for a challenging assignment. I have no doubt that his military training and the values and commitment that his service have instilled in him have led to his successful career.”
Dail, Terracon’s group manager for site investigation and remediation, said Church is both the perfect reservist and employee because he can manage multiple roles.
“If we could clone Kyle, we would,” Dail said. “He is an asset and a huge part of what makes our projects and team function effectively. When we knew his return date, I had projects lined up that could incorporate the Civil 3D engineering design software he learned to use while on deployment.”
Terracon is a 100% employee-owned consulting engineering firm specializing in environmental, facilities, geotechnical and materials services.
Church’s duties at Terracon include managing remediation programs, which essentially involves cleaning up contaminated sites primarily in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.
“I manage a team that uses construction-type equipment to clean up sites contaminated with solid waste, petroleum or chlorinated solvents,” he said. “We develop a plan that benefits regulatory agencies, local landowners and the community. Once executed, it will ultimately result in sites that can be used as green spaces, athletic facilities or yard waste facilities.”
As a part-time engineer officer in the Army Reserve, Church specializes in environmental engineering and construction management for a support team based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“My team deploys fairly regularly, so I expect that sometime within the next five years there will be another opportunity for me,” he said.
This article was written by Leslie Stone.
