Company Profile
Brailsford & Dunlavey
Company Overview
As catalysts for building community, Brailsford & Dunlavey advises our clients through complex issues and challenges related to facility development. Our strength is in utilizing both a tailored approach and collective national expertise to guide an idea from early concept definition through financing, design, construction, and operating start-up—maximizing value and mitigating risk every step of the way.
Working at B&D means more than having a job; it means having a career. We hire the best, the brightest, and the most committed professionals to collaborate in our high-performing, “work hard / play hard” culture.
If you are looking for a firm where you can gain valuable skills and experiences, implement innovative ideas, and advance your career, Brailsford & Dunlavey is the place.
Brailsford & Dunlavey is a national firm with offices in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Irvine, New York City, and Washington, D.C.—and features a client base in all 50 United States.
Company History
Although now comprised of more than 120 people in ten offices across the U.S., Brailsford & Dunlavey began as a true start-up 21 years ago. In October of 1993, the firm began doing business as Brailsford Associates, Inc., and consisted solely of the two principals, Paul Brailsford and Chris Dunlavey, and a part-time employee, Brad Noyes, working out of a single room in an executive office suite. Brailsford and Dunlavey had previously worked together at the development consulting firm MPC Associates, where Brailsford had directed the firm’s sports facilities practice and Dunlavey had served as a project manager. The two had established such an effective practice together, meshing the skillsets and backgrounds of an economist and an architect, that they decided to strike out on their own. Knowing they would need help to complete the anticipated work, they hired Noyes, a young architect fresh out of the University of Virginia as their first employee.
Initially, Brailsford Associates worked with six clients, and sufficient revenues projected to carry them through the first year. Beyond that, the future was anyone’s guess. The firm’s first assignment was to complete a student housing master plan for DePaul University in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the firm was hired for five additional planning assignments: an athletics and recreation master plan for Duke University with Sasaki Associates; the University of Maryland at College Park recreation center with Sasaki; the Findlay, Ohio recreation center with TMP Associates; a recreation center master plan for the City of Newport News, VA with Forrest Coile Associates; and a recreation center plan at Virginia Tech with Hastings & Chivetta and Ayers / Saint / Gross. This workload was sufficient to compel the firm to hire a second employee, Jeff Turner, a fresh graduate in finance from The George Washington University.
Because the firm delivered only the highest quality service to its clients, it grew and diversified in both the client types it served and the project types it planned and implemented. Today, having completed more than 1,000 assignments in 50 states and many overseas locations, B&D has planned or managed the implementation of more than $35 billion in completed construction projects. Both co-founders--Brailsford and Dunlavey--continue to be actively engaged in serving clients, and Noyes and Turner have grown with the firm to the highest positions of leadership as senior vice presidents.