King Engineering Associates

King Engineering Associates

King Engineering Associates was founded in Tampa in 1977, originally as a surveying and civil engineering consultancy serving Florida's Gulf Coast municipalities. Mike Shea joined the firm shortly after its founding and has led it since 1985, steering its evolution from a pure professional-services firm into an entity that manages and develops infrastructure assets. The firm's wealth-origin story is not tied to a single family or liquidity event; rather, it reflects five decades of reinvesting engineering-fee revenue into long-dated physical assets that the firm itself designs and permits. King concentrates on water, wastewater, stormwater, and transportation infrastructure across Florida. The firm typically pursues a design-build-operate posture — engineering the asset, shepherding it through permitting, and retaining an ownership or long-term concession stake. This blurs the line between consultant and principal investor. Key project types include municipal water-treatment plants, pump stations, reclaimed-water distribution networks, and roadway-drainage systems. Geographic concentration is nearly total within Florida, with a heavy tilt toward Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, and Manatee counties. Co-investors are frequently state revolving funds, county utility authorities, and regional water-management districts rather than institutional LPs. King employs roughly 51 professionals across its Tampa headquarters, with satellite project offices activated around long-duration construction sites. The firm does not operate a formal private-fund structure, preferring balance-sheet capital recycled from ongoing engineering contracts. In September 2023, the firm received a notice of intent from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to award a new reclaimed-water facility design-build contract in central Pasco County, adding to its active project inventory. No philanthropic foundation, club membership, or adjacent family-office vehicle has been publicly associated with the firm. The structural differentiator is vertical integration: King both engineers the asset and owns it post-construction, capturing fees at the front end and utility-like cash flows over the asset's life. This model is rare among US engineering firms, most of whom exit after design or construction. The firm's private, partnership-based governance and absence of outside LP capital allow it to hold assets indefinitely, which aligns with the 30-to-50-year depreciation schedules typical of water infrastructure.