Glickman tries to build his own field of dreams.

David Glickman, president of Glickman Engineering P.C., is not too shy to have big dreams. Opposite Glickman's desk in his midtown office is a photo of a group of well-known architects taken at Philip Johnson's 95th birthday party.

Several of them, including Peter Samton and Ronette Reilly, have big dots on their faces, drawn in with a ballpoint pen.

"There are about 10 architects with whom I always wanted to work with and many of them were at this event," Glickman explains. "When I get to do [a project with them], I mark them." At the current moment, he has about six or seven more faces to go.

But even as he continues to work on his countdown, Glickman's accomplishments are already noteworthy. His firm, started just seven years ago, has served as an engineering contractor for such properties as the Empire State Building and the Time Warner Center, as well as the Toys-R-Us at Times Square, one of the biggest toy stores in the world. Glickman Engineering is not limited to big commercial jobs, though--the firm is currently working on several residential buildings in Harlem and has completed a number of New York City public schools, most of them built by private developers. Glickman counts Cooper Square Realty, the Kaufman Organization and even the United Nations among his clients. The job he remembers best, however, was the job that made him want to join the engineering profession some 16 years ago.

"I worked for a couple of summers for a small mechanical contractor as a tin knocker--a guy who cuts sheet metal," he explains.

"I learned a little bit about air-conditioning contracting there. But the summer that Kuwait was invaded I worked on a house of a foreign minister of Kuwait in Queens. We installed 22 air-conditioners for him and after the job, I knew that [mechanical engineering] was what I wanted to do."

Glickman got off to a bad start, however, when he finished his degree at Columbia University and found himself in the midst of a national recession. Unable to find work as a mechanical engineer in New York City, he went to Detroit for six months and bided his time with an air-conditioning contractor there. His went on to work for such well-known firms as Braxton Engineering and Thornton-Tomasetti. Glickman says he started thinking about opening up his own business when clients would request to work with him even when he wasn't their project manager.

"I try to make what can be very complicated into very simple choices," he explains. "Let's say you are a developer--when you walk out of a meeting with me, you'll know exactly what needs to be done for all the trades and how much time it will take. Other people in my position [sometimes can't] give a clear picture."

Now that he runs his own business, Glickman tries to stick with the same formula.

"The best part of this job is when I come out of a meeting and can tell people: 'You need to get A, B, C and D done' and they know their project is going to happen," he says.

Today, he has project managers and division heads to help everything run smoothly, but Glickman says that he is still intimately involved with every project that comes to his firm. He loves helping the clients choose which systems they should have installed and what equipment they should purchase. But most of all, Glickman seems to enjoy turning his firm into an organization he can be really proud of. He talks excitedly about the new computers he has recently purchased for his staff--most of the Glickman engineers have double computer screens and some have quadruple ones to help them work in AutoCAD,--about the firm's new office and about how he wants his employees to enjoy their job as much as he does.

"I am trying to make sure that the growth of the company is as smooth as possible," he notes.

"It's a morale boost for the guys to known that they are working with good equipment. And I want them to feel that they work for someone who cares about [their well-being], not someone who tries to squeeze every last penny out of them."