Introduction
Taylor Critcher and Trey Little, directors of the Charlotte office of Seamon Whiteside, join Jack Ossa on The Power of Design Podcast. Seamon Whiteside is a civil engineering and site design firm of about 200 people serving North and South Carolina, and the two guests opened its Charlotte office in 2019. Jack was already working with them on a project and wanted to hear their stories.
The conversation covers how each of them came to the firm, how a new office builds a presence in a market where nobody knows it yet, and what it takes to grow a team and a client base without losing the culture that made the firm work elsewhere.
About the Episode
Trey Little, a civil engineer, grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, studied at Clemson and moved to Charleston before he had a job there. A colleague who is now a third partner in the Charlotte office helped him join the Charleston team. He leads the civil engineering group in Charlotte, with a background in multifamily, industrial and commercial work. He jokes that his job is only about 25% engineering, and that land development depends more on coordination and interpersonal skills than most people expect.
Taylor Critcher, a landscape architect, grew up in Oxford, North Carolina and also studied at Clemson. Before his first full-time job he spent a summer as a landscaping intern at Walt Disney World, including time at Animal Kingdom. He worked at a Charleston landscape architecture firm and followed his former boss to Seamon Whiteside. In Charlotte he leads a team of four landscape architects and focuses on planning, early yield studies and the vision for a development, and he took on marketing and business development for the office.
Both describe a three-headed leadership approach and a firm history that goes back to its founders, who set a habit of investing time in new people. They talk about being ambassadors for that culture, the difficulty of starting over in a big city with no connections, what they are doing to grow as leaders and fathers, and how Jack's own experience as an entrepreneur shapes the way he thinks about self-reflection and success.
Key Takeaways
- Expand with your culture: the Charlotte office started with five existing employees and grew to about 25 by carrying the firm's way of working with it.
- Sell who you are: instead of pitching every service, they meet people and look for alignment of values, goals and approach.
- Say no to bad fits: a firm is defined as much by the projects and relationships it declines as by the ones it takes.
- Civil and landscape work together: the two disciplines coordinate on nearly every project, from concept to close-out.
- Leadership is adaptive: no two days are the same, and a good leader adjusts to each team member instead of using a cookie-cutter style.
- Create opportunities: the directors see it as their responsibility to give others the same chance they were given.
- Let others make it their own: delegating means allowing new leaders to put their own flavor on the firm's approach.
Highlights from the Conversation
I'm a Problem Solver, that's what my job really is.
Trey Little
I see the Charlotte office being our biggest office, and that to me has always been my goal.
Taylor Critcher
Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.
Jack Ossa
Trey also admits that he says "I don't know" more than almost anything else in a day, followed by a plan to put the smart people in the room and find the answer.
Topics Discussed
- Career paths in civil engineering and landscape architecture
- The gap between school and real project work
- History and structure of Seamon Whiteside
- Opening and growing a new office in Charlotte
- Business development built on relationships and alignment
- Leading and training people with different needs
- Delegating while keeping the firm's culture
- Balancing work, family and personal growth
Why This Conversation Matters
Site design is where a building starts: the way a site is graded, landscaped and permitted shapes what the architecture can become. Taylor and Trey explain how engineers, landscape architects and architects can work as one team from the first yield study. That collaboration matters on every ground-up project, such as the Metric Townhomes development and the industrial campus of eFactor 3, where site conditions and building design have to be resolved together.
About the Guest
Taylor Critcher is a landscape architect and director of the Charlotte office of Seamon Whiteside, where he leads the landscape architecture team and the office's marketing and business development. Trey Little is a licensed civil engineer and director in the same office, leading the civil engineering team with a focus on multifamily, industrial and commercial projects. Both are North Carolina natives who studied at Clemson, started their careers in Charleston and moved to Charlotte to open the office in 2019.
Taylor Critcher on LinkedIn
Trey Little on LinkedIn
Seamon Whiteside Website
