Sponsored by Simpson Sports Engineering
When people think of industry, they think of pipes and steel, smokestacks and cranes. But ask Jesse Simpson, the owner of Simpson Sports Engineering, about Louisiana’s booming petrochemical and manufacturing sectors, and he thinks about something else: improved recreational facilities for schools that could not otherwise afford to upgrade.
A case in point: the recently completed installation of new football fields at East St. John and West St. John High Schools, the result of a partnership between Marathon Petroleum’s Garyville Refinery, the St. John the Baptist Parish school system and Simpson’s Baton Rouge civil engineering firm that specializes in sports facility construction.
Top Executive: Jesse Simpson, Owner
Phone: 225.572.8852
Website: Simpson Sports Engineering
For Simpson, who founded the company in 2017, that project exemplifies the ways that manufacturers contribute to Louisiana’s quality of life beyond the jobs they create and the spending they generate for local businesses.
“These partnerships are a great example of how the industry Louisiana is known for is giving back to be sure their communities are benefiting in big ways,” Simpson says.
Simpson Sports Engineering focuses on athletics site design, project management and bid process consulting. Its client list includes city and parish governments that have driven Louisiana’s sports-tourism boom and, increasingly, public and private high schools and colleges.
Recent school projects include a new turf field for Walker High School and a 100-yard indoor football practice pavilion for West Monroe High School.
“Structures like the West Monroe pavilion are becoming more common and more necessary, given the attention on heat-related illnesses in high school athletics,” Simpson says.
Zachary, Port Allen, East Feliciana Parish, and Brusly are among the Capital Region high schools now competing on playing surfaces SSE has designed and helped to install.
While his firm’s reputation for quality and innovation have his services in demand outside of Louisiana, Simpson continues to prioritize community involvement at home. SSE is active in First Tuesday, an organization supporting roughly a dozen nonprofits around Baton Rouge; the office closes one day a month so staff can volunteer.
“It is one of my favorite things we do as a company,” Simpson says.
That same throughline — investing in institutions that serve a broader public — is what Simpson credits for the company’s success as it approaches the 10-year mark.
“Showing up with consistency has continued to be an integral part of our business growth,” he says.
For school systems like St. John the Baptist Parish’s, and for the industrial companies that call those communities home, that consistency is turning into visible results on the ground in the form of first-class fields that students play on.
