Listen to this articleHayduk Engineering will be celebrating the opening of its new Ronkonkoma offices and marking its 40th year in business at a ribbon-cutting ceremony next week.
But besides showcasing the firm’s new 6,000-square-foot headquarters at 2150 Smithtown Ave., the event on Wednesday, June 12, expected to be attended by several Long Island elected officials and business leaders, is also the latest chapter in the unlikely success story of the company’s founder.
Becoming one of the area’s most accomplished and highly decorated engineers was not the expected career path for Stephen G. Hayduk, especially after he dropped out of Deer Park High School in 1967.
Despite short-circuiting his education, Hayduk was no slacker. In the fall of 1968, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam, where he flew hundreds of missions with the 57th Assault Helicopter Company.
Soon after his return to Long Island, Hayduk resumed his education at Suffolk County Community College and had ideas about becoming a marine biologist, but switched gears because job opportunities in that field were limited. While his dad George Hayduk was an aerospace engineer for Republic Aviation and Grumman, the younger Hayduk took a shine to aviation, but he was most interested in a job where he could work outside and not be stuck behind a desk.
So, after graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology with high honors in 1976, Hayduk became an engineer.
“We’re problem solvers,” he says about his chosen field. “Engineers are like inventors. It allows you to build and create things.”
Hayduk worked for a couple of Long Island engineering firms before going into business for himself, forming Hayduk Engineering in 1984 out of his Hauppauge home.
The new firm’s first big project was designing a sewage treatment plant for a senior housing complex in South Setauket, and it has since gone on to provide civil engineering services for many public and private projects.
Hayduk served as executive director of the Suffolk County Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Farmingville, and Hayduk Engineering provided its services for the project, which was dedicated in 1991, the same year he was named Engineer of the Year by the Long Island Chapter of the New York State Society of Engineers.
Other major projects the firm has worked on include the Bay Park Conveyance Project, which redirects treated wastewater and eliminates discharge into the western bays; the reconstruction of the service plazas on the New York State Thruway; and the $210 million expansion and renovation project at Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel in Islandia.
Meanwhile, Hayduk Engineering has continued to grow. Hayduk’s son Stephen A. Hayduk, a company principal and chief engineer, joined the firm in 2007. The firm now employs a staff of 42, including former deputy Suffolk County executive and sewer czar Peter Scully, who came on board as director of business development at the beginning of the year.
Finding qualified professionals to hire has been one of the firm’s biggest obstacles, the senior Hayduk says. But navigating the complex approvals process on Long Island has been one of the company’s strengths.
“Our clients come to us for that,” said Hayduk, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the LIBN Real Estate Architecture and Engineering Awards in 2022.
Hayduk Engineering is state certified as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business, which helps in securing public works projects. But it’s the firm’s long track record of success that keeps it busy.
“We’ve become trusted and respected,” Hayduk said.