Schweitzer Engineering to add 200 jobs

Pullman-based Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. announced Wednesday that it’s adding two new buildings and about 200 new jobs in the coming year.

One hundred twenty-five of those jobs will be added at its Pullman headquarters, company founder Ed Schweitzer said.

The privately held company, started in 1982, has been riding strong growth and expects to pass the 1,000-worker total this year, he said. Schweitzer Engineering employs about 680 people in Pullman; the rest are in subsidiaries and operations in the United States, Mexico and overseas.

The company makes electric-power relays, transmission monitoring devices and other components for the electric-power industry and for companies that use lots of electricity.

In addition to adding 125 jobs in Pullman, Schweitzer Engineering will add about 75 jobs at SEL Mexico and at a subsidiary near Chicago.

The company’s growth has been steady, Schweitzer added.

“We’ve averaged 105 new jobs each year for the past five years. That’s like adding a new company every year,” he said.

Schweitzer Engineering is the second-largest Whitman County employer, after Washington State University.

The 125 jobs being added there include research engineers, product engineers, assembly workers and support staff in sales and management.

Schweitzer said about 60 of the Pullman jobs will be high-paid engineers. Many of them will be doing research on new products, he said. Those jobs start at near $40,000; higher salaries are earned by engineers with more experience, said company spokeswoman Susan Fagan.

About 50 of the Pullman jobs will be assemblers, Fagan said. Those jobs start at a salary of around $17,000, she said, and include full benefits.

All that growth means Schweitzer needs to build a 22,000-square-foot research and development building and a 7,200-square-foot facilities maintenance building on its property in the Whitman County Industrial Park, at the north edge of Pullman.

Additionally, Schweitzer on Wednesday announced the company plans to help develop 92 acres of land it owns next to its corporate campus.

That property will be targeted for a mixed-use development of housing, commercial business, entertainment, restaurants and residential units, he said.

Schweitzer said the goal is to help both his company and the Pullman area deal with a severe housing shortage.

He said Pullman currently has fewer than 25 existing homes and fewer than 30 residential lots listed by real estate agents. That shortage amounts to a practically zero percent vacancy rate, making it hard to recruit out-of-town workers to move there, he said.

The 92-acre master plan calls for contractors and developers to buy land parcels from Schweitzer and use the property to create an attractive complex of shops, homes and apartments.

Schweitzer said he’s hired CB Richard Ellis, a Seattle property management firm, to help market the 92-acre development.