Our History

Frank Dudek and Greg Luke opened the doors of Luke-Dudek in Encinitas, California in 1980 to provide engineering services to water and wastewater agencies.

By 1983, the firm had approximately 40 employees and moved to our current headquarters at 605 Third Street in Encinitas. In 1988 Greg Luke departed the firm. Frank Dudek became president and we became known as Dudek & Associates. Two new practices were started during this period. District management and operations provides management, administration and operations staffing to California water and wastewater agencies. Our construction management group specializes in working with municipal agencies.

1990s

In response to a growing need for environmental services, the firm launched a four-person environmental practice led by June Collins in 1990. Today, our environmental and natural resources management practice is one of the largest such private practices in California and has been involved in a number of landmark California projects. June still leads the group as division manager and as the firm’s executive vice president.

Our hazardous waste/hydrogeology division started in 1992 and we established regional offices through acquisitions in Santa Barbara, Orange County, and Coachella Valley.

2000s

We expanded our natural resources management services with the start-up of our subsidiary, Habitat Restoration Sciences, Inc. (HRS), to provide licensed contracting services for native habitat landscaping. Today, HRS is one of California's largest contractors specializing in native habitat restoration and maintenance. We launched our employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and expanded into Northern California with offices in Sacramento and Auburn. Since 2006, we have appeared annually on the list of Top 200 U.S. Environmental Firms compiled by Engineering News Record (ENR).

To reflect our continued growth, we dropped “& Associates” and today are known simply as Dudek.