DornerWorks History
DornerWorks has been a growing company since its founding in 2000 by David K. Dorner.
View a brief video history of DornerWorks.
When David Dorner first launched DornerWorks in early 2000, he had no intention of growing it into a design house. At the time an electronics engineer at Smiths Aerospace (now GE Aviation) in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the 1993 graduate of Calvin College had lost interest in the corporate world. He pursued an opening for a tenure-track position at his alma mater, and set up a consulting practice as a backup plan.
“I thought it would be something I can do on top of the teaching,” David recalls. “It was something to do during the summer and keep a foothold in industry.”
David didn’t get the tenure-track position and was instead offered an adjunct instructor position at Calvin. While teaching part-time, he provided consulting services for then-Grandville-based color management firm X-Rite and for his former employer, Smiths Aerospace. David followed this path for two years, and he was kept very busy by those two clients.
In 2002, another engineer asked David if he could use a partner. “I had never thought of that before,” David says now. He was consistently turning down offers for more jobs, and then it hit him that it might be a good idea to add some employees.
Two years later, DornerWorks had a base of six full-time engineers on its staff. Work was steady and plentiful, but managing the day-to-day operations of the business was beginning to be overwhelming for David.
When David’s brother Jeff moved back to Grand Rapids from Manhattan a year later, David convinced him to come aboard as Business Manager, so that David could return his focus to engineering.
Jeff also helped to recruit talent, and DornerWorks quickly grew to a team of 10 consultants, with a workload to match. David decided to pursue his next business goal: his own facility, with his own staff that could do work outside of the facility and direct management of his clients.
In 2005, DornerWorks purchased its first building, just off the corner of Burton Street and Eastern Avenue in Grand Rapids. From there DornerWorks launched its first project with its reliable client X-Rite, and wondered from there where the business would go.
David continued to search for more jobs to do, and work continued to pour in. DornerWorks continued to staff up to handle the work. DornerWorks grew to a full team of 26 just a year after launching the Burton Street office, including a few on-site consultants under the early growth model.
A staff of that size could no longer fit into the Burton Street office, so space was leased on Kraft Avenue, nearer to DornerWorks’ aerospace clients. Most of the work housed at the Kraft Avenue facility was focused on those clients, while the Burton Street office housed work for many other clients.
As 2007 passed, it became clear that the two DornerWorks facilities would soon be inadequate. A new dream emerged of a single facility where the entire company could be located, with additional space for future growth.
In early 2008, DornerWorks moved into its current location, a two-floor office space on Lake Eastbrook Boulevard in Grand Rapids. Over our time in this facility, we have expanded our staff even further, requiring us to finish the previously unfinished space within.