Built in Walton County. Trusted across the coast.
Some firms come and go. ECA has been a fixture of Northwest Florida's civil engineering community since 1979.
Emerald Coast Associates was founded in 1979 by Raymond Richardson as a surveying firm rooted in Walton County. As the region's growth accelerated through the 1980s and 1990s, Raymond brought on Dean Burgis to build out the engineering side of the practice — and what began as a surveying outfit grew into a full-service civil engineering and land-planning firm.
In 2005, Dean and two partners acquired the company from Raymond, carrying the ECA name and its standards forward into a new generation of leadership. The firm sold its surveying division in 2022 to focus exclusively on civil engineering and land planning. In 2025, the engineering firm was acquired by Winston Chou, who now leads the practice into its next chapter.
Through every transition, the work has stayed the same: thoughtful, technically sound civil engineering for the places and people of the Emerald Coast.