Noncompete agreements protect employers

The agreement forced the pair’s new company, Dake Wells Architecture, to expand its market into other sectors of the construction industry – a fact that Wells said led to the company’s increased work in new school construction.

“We had some contacts in the K-12 arena, and we used those to our advantage,” Wells said. “We’ve built now, in the first two years, a pretty healthy portfolio of K-12 work.”

Wells said he and Dake also do work for higher education institutions and churches - their projects while at Butler Rosenbury included the Gittinger Music Center on the campus of College of the Ozarks and First & Calvary Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Dake Wells' workload now is about 50 percent institutional.

Dake and Wells were able to work around an agreement that is fairly common, especially in industries that work with lists of clients or specialized techniques and training.

See SBJ’s Sept. 4 issue for more on noncompete agreements and other law issues.