The Company Check — Run Any Pool Engineering Company Through the Five Tests
Every pool engineering company arrives holding a portfolio. Run the company through these five requests before you sign: the honest verdict each produces, and what to do with the companies that pass.
| The request | How it runs — and what it decides |
|---|---|
| "Name the licensee who will seal my set — name, number, discipline, in writing." | The license test. Then five minutes on the board's own lookup: active, in-discipline, in your state. A name produced as routine passes the cheapest test in the purchase. A name deferred, approximated, or replaced with finished-pool photography has failed it in public. |
| "Who actually seals sets like mine here, and what is that seal carrying this month?" | The capacity test. The seal map per discipline, the live load on each sealing licensee, and your project's stated place in the queue. Reassurance is not a queue position; a written load statement is. |
| "What do you need from my ground before you will design the shell?" | The soil test. A document list — geotechnical picture, survey, drainage pattern — with design gated on it passes. A price produced before any document changed hands fails, and tells you the shell will be designed from habit. |
| "Show me one AHJ comment trail from a permitted job here — comments and your answers, in revision order." | The revision test. Point-by-point answers on the record, corrected sets as identified revisions, re-sealed by the same licensee. A trail that cannot be produced describes a revision behavior you will meet later, at comment-letter prices. |
| "Show me a redacted close-out file from a comparable finished pool." | The record test — the one about the next thirty years. Permits, sets as issued, calculations, sign-offs, one record index the owner holds. A company that manufactures its record shows the file the way it shows a drawing: because it makes the file on purpose. |
Then, the Doors
Whichever companies survive the five requests, the last step is the same: compare them against the published methodology — and start with the evaluated companies whose answers to these requests are stated on this site, test by test: the five evaluated companies.
Who Publishes This Directory
Published by Apex Grid Engineering PLLC. The companies evaluated and listed on this site today are the publisher's own family of brands — this is an affiliated directory, not a neutral referee. The methodology below is the standard any pool engineering company can be measured against, and it is the standard we hold our own firms to in public. Presentation order on this site is the publisher's choice and an experiment in what helps buyers decide — it is not an objective quality verdict, and no firm pays for placement. Coverage claims are limited to licensure the operator's bench actually holds, stated per state. No reviews, ratings, or project claims are published for any firm unless they can be documented — this site grades pool engineering companies against the five tests and publishes the publisher's methodology assessments; it does not publish customer reviews, and you will find none invented here.
Operated by Apex Grid Engineering PLLC. Founder & CEO: Jeremy “Chico” Mills — serial entrepreneur and USAF veteran. Jeremy is the founder and chief executive; he is not a licensed professional engineer, and no page on this site implies otherwise. The engineering behind the listed firms is performed and sealed by their licensed PE benches.