2024 Economic Impact Awards 11-20 Years in Business Top Honors: Toth and Associates Inc.

Put people first and profits follow: It’s been the formula for success at Toth and Associates Inc., says President Adam Toth.

In the 21 years since his father founded the engineering firm, it has experienced exponential growth with communitywide impacts. Toth’s 2023 companywide revenue of nearly $33 million was a 34% increase from 2022. That year, the firm hired 44 new employees, added 47 clients and worked on 971 projects.

“We lead by putting our people first, by putting our community first, by putting our clients first. We don’t lead with profits in mind. We lead with people in mind, and the profits have always come,” Toth says “It’s been one project at a time, one employee at a time. We’ve been successful in adding one client at a time, and it has just luckily been continuous.”

Toth’s clients include public entities, municipalities, businesses and schools. Since 2010, the firm has worked with public entities, schools and cities in the procurement of more than $425 million grant dollars for safe rooms projects and nearly $20 million to improve drinking, waste and stormwater infrastructure and to perform service line inventories. Across its five offices in four states, the firm employs 197 individuals, each representing a family. Toth says he takes that responsibility seriously. In addition to expanding a robust benefits package, average wages increased by nearly $4 an hour in 2023, and Toth received a 98% overall satisfaction score through employee surveys.

“What drives me is the impact that we can make in our employees’ lives, our community, and so really I feel like Toth has a higher calling than just making money,” Toth said. “We are trying to better our community. We are trying to better the people who work here, and that is really our why.”

The firm seeks to create, attract and retain skilled talent in the area through partnerships with local universities including Missouri State University. In 2021, the firm gave a financial gift to MSU’s foundation, which resulted in the naming of the Toth and Associates Engineering Classroom and Toth and Associates Electrical Engineering Lab. Employees provide guest lectures and direct student support services and year-round paid internships. It’s part of an effort to bolster engineering in Springfield, says Toth, and create an even broader economic impact.

“I feel like high-paying engineering jobs are so beneficial to the community,” he says. “It’s high education, it’s high pay, it’s high-quality work, it brings dollars into the community. If I can in any way change the story on Springfield as being a high-tech or high-engineering or high-paying community, I would love to have a bit of impact on that.”