Enviroservices & Training Center Helps Clients Navigate Complex Environmental Rules

2024 SmallBiz Editor’s Choice Award winner: From a two-person startup, founders Mike Yee and Gregory Perry built an environmental consulting firm with global reach.

Mike Yee remembers what it was like to come in on the ground floor of the environmental consulting industry. He was at the University of Washington in the 1980s, when environmental laws passed in the ’70s began being enforced.

Later, while working at an environmental company in Hawai‘i, he met a colleague, Gregory Perry, who would become his partner at EnviroServices & Training Center.

April marked 30 years since the founding of the company, Yee says. “April Fool’s Day, to be exact,” he adds with a smile.

But taking the big step to launch ETC was no joke.

“After some conversations, we found we had a common vision – a vision that would be driven by a matrix prioritizing client satisfaction and employee value over everything else – and decided to set off on our own,” Perry says.

Since its launch by Yee and Perry, the company has grown into the state’s largest locally owned and Hawai‘i-based environmental engineering and consulting firm. Its 65 employees help clients navigate a maze of environmental regulations.

The company has tallied thousands of projects in Hawai‘i, Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Johnston Atoll, the Federated States of Micronesia, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

“There are roughly 11 active environmental statutes or laws that regulate people,” Yee says. “We decided to focus on a few … subsurface soil, subsurface groundwater and surface waters.”

The consultancy guides its various public- and private-sector clients toward their business objectives while complying with laws on stormwater management, solid and hazardous waste management and drinking water quality.

And while they do that, Yee and Perry are making good on the other part of their vision by ensuring their employees are productive and satisfied. One proof of that is ETC has been among Hawaii Business Magazine’s Best Places to Work every year since 2012, including this year. Yee says that employees are allowed to bring their children to the office if that eases their workday and makes them more productive – one of the many company policies aimed at ensuring a good work-life balance.

“And one of the blessings of Covid – and I think this was an issue for many people – is we discovered that remote work was very possible,” he says.

Individual employees may differ on what makes ETC a good place to work, Perry says, but the common thread is that people at the company “sincerely care, respect and want success for our team, both in and out of the office.”