Where Are They Now?
Throughout his life, Gary Gilbert has drawn inspiration from his desire to change others’ lives for the better. One way Gilbert, who owns a successful surveying company in the Metroplex, does this is through treating his employees well. “I enjoy knowing that my employees are taken care of with me and that I’ve made that opportunity available for them.”
Gilbert went to Dublin schools through his sophomore year. At the time, he had a job and was also taking his mom to and from work, so he decided to switch to the Paradigm Accelerated Charter School for a more flexible schedule.
Gilbert finished high school in 1997 and moved to Tullahoma, Tennessee, where he started working as a restaurant manager. He moved back to Texas a couple of years later and started working in quality control testing for a concrete company.
It was through this job that he found his current career. “I was out on a job with a guy whose mandate was to help survey and so I went to work for him and started doing that,” he said.
Over the next decade, he worked in surveying for different companies, until in 2010 he decided to start his own business.
“I’d managed a lot of started survey divisions for other companies, helped build them up, and it was time for me to progress,” he said. “I saw the opportunity to make a lot of money, and started my own.”
The company, called Gilbert Surveying, now takes on over 100 jobs each year. “We did surveying for a Facebook data center that went up in the Metroplex, we do a lot of Amazon warehouses,” Gilbert said.
On a typical project, Gilbert’s company will be the first people on the job and sometimes the last to leave. He starts out by taking engineers’ plans and making them work for the land they have.
“We tell them where to put the building corners, how to put the concrete and where to put the utilities and the water,” he said. Everything on the entire job, it’s controlled by surveyors.”
As the owner of the company, Gilbert spends most of his time overseeing projects, making sure customer relations are good, and taking care of his employees’ needs. In the future, he hopes to expand slightly, while keeping his workload manageable.
Gilbert also has side businesses flipping houses and boats. “I had an opportunity financially to be able to pick up some good deals and capitalize on that,” he said.
When he’s not working, Gilbert enjoys fishing and shooting skeet. He also spends a lot of time with his 15-year-old niece. Gilbert has stepped up in her life after her father, Gilbert’s brother, passed away in a car accident.
Gilbert offered the following advice to Dublin graduates: “Do something that makes you happy,” he said. “That’s the most valuable thing you have — no amount of money or anything can replace that.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.