Member Milestone

Celebrating 25 Years!

Founded in 1998, Otter Creek Engineering (OCE) started with four employees and focused primarily on water and wastewater design and permitting. From those humble beginnings with a 2nd floor office on Court Street in Middlebury, OCE has expanded across the state and into New Hampshire, with offices in Rutland, East Middlebury, and West Lebanon, New Hampshire. OCE now has a staff of 20, with four licensed professional engineers, a hydrogeologist, a natural resources ecologist, and a robust support staff, including junior engineers, surveyors, technicians, and communication, GIS, and permit specialists. OCE’s services have similarly expanded and now include water, wastewater, stormwater, roadway/transportation, site design, survey, and asset management.

2002 Otter Creek Engineering Staff

Jason Larocque, OCE President and one of the four founding members of the company, was both excited to mark the occasion and thankful for the support of the community: “We value where we live, and the work we do helps ensure our neighbors have infrastructure that will allow them to lead happy and healthy lives.

We’ve been fortunate to grow over the years, and as the civil engineering needs of Vermonters change, we are always looking for ways to provide the most environmentally sound and efficient service possible. We appreciate those we’ve worked with over the years and look forward to more in the years to come!”

Initially, Jason explained the work OCE had done over the years was simply standard civil engineering fare: designing water and sewer lines, half-million-gallon water tanks, stormwater practices for commercial sites, drinking water treatment systems.

When pressed, he admitted that OCE had engineered some truly unique and innovative practices throughout Vermont—from the slow sand filtration system for the City of Rutland’s drinking water supply to high-tech wastewater pump stations in Middlebury and PFOA treatment systems across Vermont.

2021 Otter Creek Engineering Staff

When it comes to OCE’s continued success, the approach can be summarized into the following key components:

Collaborative Relationships-

OCE takes pride in working with clients to help assess their needs and develop solutions that meet their requirements from a technical, financial, and operational perspective. No one knows a community, its needs and challenges, better than its own community members. OCE hits the ground running by compiling this information to help develop solutions that will best work for the project at hand.

Capacity and Professional Partnerships-

With those twenty-five years in operation, OCE has learned efficiencies and developed long-standing professional partnerships with specialized consultants. These relationships have allowed OCE to provide comprehensive and coordinated project scopes and to efficiently work on a large number and wide variety of projects.

Practical Approach and Attentive Design-

A practical approach to projects, with an attentiveness toward simple and effective design solutions, is the foundation of what OCE does. The collaborative process we develop with our clients, combined with our practical sensibility, results in projects that are constructible, maintainable, and effective.

Funding, Regulations, and the Small Community-

Vermont is full of small communities, which come in different sizes and organizational structures. Village centers, rural towns, fire districts, and mobile home communities all face the same challenge of providing water and wastewater services at an affordable user cost. Small communities are regulated in the same manner as the large municipalities and must follow the same rules. Often these communities do not have the customer base to support such improvement projects affordably without additional funding support. OCE’s experience, relationships with local regulators, understanding of the rules, and familiarity with a variety of funding sources will be an asset on any project.

Experience During Construction-

Since OCE’s inception, we have been providing clients with experienced staff with a practical construction background. Our staff has a reputation with clients and contractors as being fair, practical, and even handed. Our staff is well organized and responsive to the project and the Owner’s needs because we take a personal ownership and pride in your projects. During construction, we assign experienced staff to serve as the client’s Resident Project Representative (RPR). They are not just problem solvers; they stay ahead of the Contractor, anticipate issues, and work toward making sure issues don’t become problems to start with. The experience of our staff allows us to be flexible with construction phase budgets, to meet each client and project’s needs.

OCE is proud to make its home in Addison County and will continue to provide exceptional civil and environmental engineering services!