Not a good place to work. Awful CEO and Managers! Non existent IT and HR - Engineer KOA Employee Review

A very well reputed and established company so no worries about job insecurities. Management is well organized. New management is even better. Very humble and approachable and listener. They are all about supporting and developing employees if they find the person wanting to grow. I got many many opportunities and promoted several times. Provided me tons of training opportunities. I would partner with them on future projects for sure. During COVID there were minimal social events but now they are trying their level best to introduce few which is great. I personally know couple of people who started here as an intern and became VP/MD within 10 years. This tells a lot. I wish i stayed with them :( ... The other opportunity is just something different i wanted to do or else there was no way i was leaving.

May be they might wanna establish a separate neutral HR department starting with 2 new hirees; one may be a director other assistant. I worked in a previous firm and they did just that and from there on they kept growing. This would relieve the work load on upper management who is currently ad-hocing it.

Still looking for a pro

The new parent company - Lochner - is totally profit-driven and has eliminated valuable employees, a number with 10 to over 20 years experience, at all levels from Admin to Division Managers. They have also been inept in hiring additional staff, significantly overburdening key staff that has for some reason remained after the takeover. The Lochner managers from the Midwest that have been assigned to KOA pretend to be nice guys, but in reality are non-communicative for the most part, except when they want to chew managers out for not meeting financial targets. The main Lochner manager for the Orange office is a dishonest, hatchet man that wants "yes" men to help him with the dirty work. Lochner obviously could care less about the type of local agency work that KOA has traditionally done, and is simply looking to establish a foothold in So Cal and transition into large regional transportation projects, BEWARE!!