How It All Began

Hi, thanks for visiting

Tonga Angilau is the name behind this website…

I was born and raised in the islands of Tonga, small groups of islands in the South Pacific, located about 1,200 miles north east of New Zealand; 5,400 miles south west of Los Angeles.

One of my two sons gets special treatment for being Tonga son of Tonga from Tonga :-)

For the last 23 years the United States of America had been home with wife and 4 children.

While in college studying mathematics at Brigham Young University –Hawaii (BYU-H), I came across the words Civil Engineering. At the time, I was a few semesters away from graduating but had no idea what to do with a math degree.

Long story short, I graduated from the University of Utah in June 1997 with Masters degree in Civil Engineering with structural design emphasis.

I worked as a structural engineer for several years but did not like the daily routine crunching numbers.

While diy-ing concrete work on the side, I came across a project to construct a $10 million apartment complex.

Due to my lack of resources, I bid the project intending to check the market out, just getting my feet wet as far as bidding is concern.

Initially I thought that I had bid the job really high. I was surprised and terrified that I had the winning bid.

My fear worsened when discovered that I was $150,000 lower than the next bidder... imagine that? Had my bid was another $100k higher, I would had been low still.

Two days after signing the contract I had a crew forming and pouring the footings.

At the time, even though my concrete experience was very limited, my engineering background took over.

Knowledge of engineering principles and ability to apply those principles in the field made my approach very unique and successful.

In the years that followed that first "big" job I had worked on projects that worth few hundred dollars to $560 million 890,000 square feet structure.

The bigger the project, the bigger the challenge, but the approach is remain the same.

I have a wide range of experience in the the field of concrete, structural steel, CMU, wood or structural in general.

I created this website to share what I learned with those looking for info.

Take care and thanks for visiting!