Good Fulton & Farrell
Dallas  
Overall Rank: 82nd 
Rank in Each Category: 
• Sustainability: 118th
• Design: 138th

Duncan Fulton, FAIA, a founding principal and president/CEO of Good Fulton & Farrell (GFF), has a few theories on how his firm took the top slot for business this year. First, he credits the firm’s location in Dallas.

“We’ve got the good luck of being in a part of the country where the recession was milder than other areas,” he says. “North Texas, in particular, has benefited from some new technologies for oil production, and while we don’t serve that industry directly, all architects are, at the end of the day, influenced by the larger regional economy around them.”

This doesn’t mean that the firm came out of the recession unscathed. GFF had to let good people go and scale back, but another business choice that buoyed them during these slow billings periods was being debt-free, a strategy that the firm embraced when it was founded in 1982.

“We’ve been debt free for about 30 years and still are today,” Fulton says. “Our attitude is to save nuts for the winter, so we benefitted from that positioning. The recession hit us, and we were affected, but not as badly as others.”

Last year, Fulton says, marked the turning point where “it felt like we finally recovered from the recession.” He credits the increase in billings, in part, to resurgence in multifamily projects and to the fact that GFF is in the process of ownership transition, which means that 14 of the roughly 100 employees are now principals who can bring in new work.

“As a result, we’ve got more channels for new projects to come into the firm,” Fulton says. “Knowing the firm has enough work is a shared responsibility and in order to be a principal, you have to keep yourself and other people busy.”

Rank Firm Name Score
1 Good Fulton and Farrell 100.00
2 Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects 96.71
3 Cambridge Seven Associates 91.94
4 CO Architects 90.56
5 Hickok Cole Architects 89.71
6 Westlake Reed Leskosky 86.94
7 NBBJ 85.27
8 Skidmore Owings & Merrill 84.52
9 William Rawn Associates 83.57
10 Centerbrook Architects & Planners 82.83
11 WRNS Studio 81.96
12 Spector Group 81.52
13 RMW Architecture and Interiors 81.51
14 BAR Architects 81.22
15 Populous 80.15
16 HOK 79.87
17 KPF 79.32
18 Fentress Architects 78.16
19 Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill 77.95
20 Eskew+Dumez+Ripple 77.48
21 Ennead Architects 77.01
22 Tsoi/Kobus & Associates 76.79
23 HDR Architecture 76.42
24 Ann Beha Architects 76.27
25 Studios Architecture 75.85
26 H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture 75.36
27 FxFowle Architects 74.88
28 Clark Nexsen 74.84
29 EYP Architecture & Engineering 74.42
30 Perkins+Will 73.91
31 LPA 73.81
32 Meyers + Associates 73.77
33 1100 Architect 73.74
34 Gensler 73.56
35 Mark Cavagnero Associates 73.46
36 Sorg Architects 73.27
37 DLR Group 72.08
38 Goettsch Partners 71.67
39 Analogue Studio 71.66
40 Array Architects 71.21
41 Payette 70.50
42 BBH Design 70.45
43 SHW Group 70.18
44 PageSouthlandPage 69.86
45 Boora Architects 69.35
46 Ayers / Saint / Gross Architects + Planners 68.61
47 Mackey Mitchell 67.96
48 Sasaki Associates 67.24
49 Cannon Design 66.25
50 Ballinger 65.70

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