December 23, 2021
A Letter From Jay Brown
To our extended JBPro family,
It’s hard to believe 2021 is already coming to an end. It’s been challenging and rewarding. It’s been a year of growth. Despite the issues faced with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the new year opened with our leadership team putting the final touches on our vision to open a St. Augustine office and expand our service area to Northeast Florida. In March of this year, the office was officially opened, and we welcomed Zach Tucker and Christina Griggs as our first employees in St. Augustine. The office has already grown and accomplished many new things for JBPro, including bringing in the largest surveying contract in company history.
Overall in 2021, we expanded our staff by 12 people and now have over 30 employees for the first time ever. We were fortunate enough to add 77 new clients and had our highest revenue total to date. We added three new crews to our surveying team, and each of them have hit the ground running to serve our clients in both of our office locations. Our company almost doubled the number of projects we performed over the previous year, and more than doubled the number of counties we completed projects in. We added five continuing services contracts with public entities that we hadn’t worked with coming into the year. We saw some great projects completed in 2021 too. We completed the Santa Fe College Blount Center, the Poe Springs Park improvement project, and the Wimberley subdivision project in Gainesville, just to name a few.
JBPro’s commitment to community has never been stronger. We continued sponsoring an underprivileged child from Bangladesh named Faysal, who has truly become part of the JBPro family. Many of our employees have his picture on their desks, and we talk about him regularly at office gatherings. We became a corporate sponsor for a great organization called the Mirror Image Leadership Academy (MILA). MILA uplifts at-risk minority teenagers by showing them how they can overcome poverty and other adverse conditions to become great leaders in their communities, families, and workplaces. In January, JBPro will host MILA’s mentees at our Gainesville office for an introduction to the Civil Engineering and Surveying industry. We hope to show them not only a rewarding career path but also the importance of working for a company that cares about its employees and clients. Lastly, alongside Faith Missionary Baptist Church, we were the primary sponsor of a Thanksgiving meal giveaway that provided a full Thanksgiving meal to 100 local families that would’ve otherwise gone without food. It was great to know that, while we were celebrating our company Thanksgiving potluck, 100 other families were enjoying a similar Thanksgiving meal thanks to our support. That was truly something to be thankful for.
Individually and collectively, we had great accomplishments in 2021. Both Chris Potts and Christina Griggs were appointed to public board positions serving the Alachua County and City of St. Augustine communities. Logan Peters was elected as an officer of the local chapter of ASCE, the most prominent civil engineering service organization in the industry. I was fortunate enough to be awarded the Builder’s Association of North Central Florida’s Associate of the Year award, its highest honor. After winning the award in 2001, I certainly didn’t expect to win it again 20 years later, but the great contributions that every JBPro employee made this year afforded me the opportunity. It’s undoubtedly more of a company achievement than a personal one, and I could not be more proud of our team.
Our staff continued to improve in many ways. Two of our engineers, Kyle Willems and Tim Boehlein, took the Professional Engineering exam and passed it with flying colors. We brought on board three certified drone pilots to the JBPro surveying team and now offer a full suite of aerial surveying services. More than ten of our surveyors have signed up for the CST program and are looking forward to receiving their official certifications in 2022.
There are so many more things I could mention about 2021, but the most important thing is just to say thank you to all of our incredible staff members. They are each the reason JBPro is so successful. Their individual contributions are greatly appreciated, and their willingness to support one another throughout both the challenging and the fun times are the heart and soul of our company. We are here to serve our clients with our best efforts but also to support each other and help every employee have success.
Our plans for 2022 are shaping up, and I’m confident it will, once again, be our best year ever. We have plans to add to our core service offerings and increase our marketing and business development capabilities in the new year. We are planning to add experienced staff to the surveying department and bring on some support staff for our administrative team. We see 2022 as a great opportunity to continue our growth and development, while also focusing on improving our internal operations and quality control. This year has been excellent for our company, our employees, and our community partners, and I couldn’t be more excited for the year ahead.
Thank you to everyone who makes JBPro so special.
Jay Brown