Jack Schoustra.

Besides flooded dikes and thousands of dead, World War II left a tremendous demand for construction and a much reduced work force to carry it out in Holland.

But in an attempt to defy supply and demand, Holland's socialist postwar government imposed fixed wages for many types of labor in a misguided attempt to rein in inflation.

That led to a black market situation, recalls Jack Schoustra, now chief executive of Earth Technology Corp. of Long Beach.

Schoustra, 60, remembers how his father, owner of a construction company, would slip an extra 25 percent into workers' envelopes. Eventually he would get caught, be fined heavily and stop the practice, and the workers "would say, 'goodbye boss!'" recalls Schoustra, a lanky man who stands 6-feet 4-inches.

"I hated the idea of doing business like that," said Schoustra, who sold the family business he had inherited from his father after finishing his engineering studies.

Schoustra decided Holland wasn't big enough for both himself and Dutch socialism.

The latter showed no sign of budging, a situation which sent the Dutchman flying to Canada in 1956 -- the United States' doors were shut.

The New World has been kind to Schoustra, who later relocated to California and has built the firm he founded in 1970 into one of the largest architectural and engineering firms in Los Angeles County.

Earth Technology solves complex environmental and engineering problems for the companies and U.S. government agencies with which it consults. Its principal services consist of identifying and removing waste and asbestos pollutants and evaluating potential sites for complex facilities, such as determining the best locations for ballistic and nuclear missiles.

The company had net income of $1.3 million on gross revenues of $54.2 million in fiscal 1990, up from $518,000 netted on a gross of $37.8 million in 1989.

However, the company and Schoustra faced its greatest setback in nearly a decade this year as the recession and an ill-advised acquisition combined to produce a loss in fiscal 1991 that Schoustra estimates will be $4 million.

In fiscal third quarter results announced June 19, the company lost $4.2 million, overwhelming the roughly $200,000 in earnings expected from the year's other three quarters. Much of the hit related to a $3.3 million write-off to restructure its asbestos consulting firm, Alternative Ways Inc. Schoustra, however, believes the writeoff has purged the problems and he anticipates a return to profitability.

Schoustra, according to colleagues and observers, has a knack of seeing opportunities and positioning himself and his company to exploit them. "I stay close to the industry, read a lot and look at a problem and try to turn it into an opportunity," he says.

Schoustra, who first went to Toronto to work with a small firm that specialized in soil mechanics, later moved to a Pasadena firm, Converse Consultants. There he became heavily involved in residential and commercial development business that was booming as a result of Los Angeles' ferocious growth.

After 10 years, during which he rose to executive vice president, Schoustra saw the company become more difficult to manage after its founder, Fred Converse, quit.

"The harmony was gone and it wasn't worth it -- life's too short," says Schoustra. "I had always felt I wanted to start my own business. I chose consulting because that's a field where you can do that. You can do it on your own technical reputation; you don't need as much capital."

With $200,000 from a Dutch engineering contractor to support him, Schoustra went into an area in which few consulting engineering firms were involved -- siting for nuclear power plants and offshore oil drilling platforms and pipelines.

Schoustra says his firm benefitted from pioneering a different procedure. Companies would often pick a site first and then find a fatal flaw in the project after sinking $20 million to $30 million in costs into the projects. Schoustra says he told clients to allow him to survey as large an area as possible for potential sites and then decide which ones were likely to be the safest.

The Sylmar earthquake of 1971 didn't hurt either, creating an instant demand for engineering services in Southern California. Nor did the booming growth rate in Los Angeles.

The company was an immediate success. Schoustra had wisely insisted in a low personal salary -- $25,000 per year, 33 percent less than in his former job -- from his investors and a large share of any potential profits. "The low salary appealed to the frugal Dutch," Schoustra quips.

As a result, he made so much from the incentive pay that within four years he was earning more than the head of the Dutch company that had lent him the money, with Schoustra's company growing from four employees to 200.

While such growth might have strained the management capacities of other entrepreneurs, Schoustra says management lessons he learned from his father at the latter's death bed -- he took over his father's business with one week of training -- came flooding back to him.

One lesson, he recalls, was that workers don't mind a strict boss -- they like it. He recalls going to his father's job sites and hearing workers actually "brag about how angry my father got at them."

In the late 1970s, as nuclear power and offshore drilling work declined, Schoustra segued into the public sector.

He suggested to the U.S. Air Force that it should spend some time checking the geology, topology and ground-water conditions of places where they planned to locate MX missile sites.

The Air Force liked his work so much that it contracted with him outside the bidding process for 10 years. That angered larger competitors who were outraged that an upstart company -- owned largely by Dutchmen, no less -- was being awarded exclusive defense contracts.

He took the company public in 1987. But Schoustra freely admits not every decision has been a winner. Take his acquisition of Alternative Ways, which he bought at the height of the real estate market in 1989, with properties needing asbestos work as they changed hands.

The asbestos consulting subsidiary enjoyed one successful year in fiscal 1990 before the slowing economy clobbered eastern property sales and slashed the subsidiary's monthly sales volume by two-thirds. Now, Schoustra has trimmed the unit's staff and management as well as market expectations, to concentrate on serving existing clients rather than pursuing fading business in a down market.

Life as an engineering consultant is a constant scramble to find new growth areas as old ones peter out. But that challenge is what Schoustra likes best about the job.

"I like the variety and excitement of the chase -- pursuing a major project, outfoxing the competition by how you present yourself and your abilities," he says. "The credo of our company is to be selected due to our greater quality, not because of price."

Schoustra also hopes to be among the contractors that benefit from a recent Defense Department commitment to clean up its facilities, many involving fuel spills, in the wake of demands from the Environmental Protection Agency. Proposed base closures should only increase the demand for such services, since civil authorities will not accept contaminated facilities from the departing military.

Another ambition is to go global. "He would like us to become an international company," Chief Operating Officer Diane Creel says. "As a European, he would like to see us have a large share of the European market."

Eastern Europe, in particular. There is an oversupply of engineering firms in Western European countries like Germany and France. Eastern Europe, however, with its 40 years of communist environmental neglect, is a different story, says Schoustra. He opened an office in Krakow, Poland, this year.

If the company makes a large move in that direction, Schoustra may already have a language edge. He already speaks German, French, Dutch and some Spanish in addition to nearly flawless English -- one advantage of growing up in a small country like Holland, Schoustra notes.

While Schoustra says he has no plans to return to Holland after retiring, friends says he does indeed long for the land of flowers and windmills.

"I think Jack misses Holland," says longtime friend Jeff Lodder, himself a Dutchman. "Most Dutch (in America) miss it. What they miss is gezelligheid -- that means family intimacy, sitting around the fireplace at home and discussing things. Here, life is fast. There, people take more time to enjoy life."

Creel says Schoustra's openness to his company's 500 employees sets him apart from other employers she has known. "He's a guy who's really willing to give responsibility and help you accomplish -- not a guy that holds everything close to him."

Nor does he keep all the profits to himself. In September, at the firm's 20th anniversary, Schoustra gave 20 shares out of his own company's take to each of his 500 employees.