Holly Cornell Oral History Interview, April 5, 1982

JENNIFER LEE: Why did you volunteer to start that office in Seattle? Isn't that correct, that you volunteered to go or were you pressured to go?

HOLLY CORNELL: No, I think it was, in part, my idea. It looked to me like we had pretty well saturated the market in Oregon at that time and that we were going to have difficulty selling our services to a larger city like Seattle if we were located in a little place like Corvallis, Oregon. I had been kind of covering the eastern Oregon and Washington territory. I kind of felt that maybe a move would be something new and different and it would, I guess, help us to grow. I'm not sure that everybody else was that anxious to go. By that time, we'd already started an office in Boise so it looked like something like this was a logical move.

JL: What did the others think?

HC: Well, there was some question about whether we needed to grow or not, or whether we couldn't do perfectly well remaining at the size we were and just going ahead that way. I had the concern, you know, that we were going to get all the work done and then there might not be enough work. We needed to broaden our market and our acquaintances and our reputation.

JL: The goal of some of the partners was to stay at the same level of growth and you wanted to expand?

HC: Ummm, hummm. I think there was some of that. Although I don't think anybody ever put it into quite that many words, I think sometimes the question was raised, "Well, do we need to get any bigger? Size isn't necessarily good."

JL: Why did you see growth as positive, then?

HC: Well, because, in order to do the kind of interesting advanced projects that I was interested in, and I think several of the others were interested in, I felt that we had to have a broader market-a wider range of possible clients so that we had a chance to do some of these more interesting projects.

JL: What made you think that you could succeed in Seattle where there obviously was a great deal of competition compared to Corvallis where there probably wasn't as much?

HC: There certainly was more competition but there was also more work to be done, particularly operating out of Oregon. Once you took care of the Willamette River and a few of the larger cities in eastern Oregon, there wasn't much else to do and we were not very successful in working in Portland because of coming from a little community down the road. So, from my experience in working in eastern Washington and one thing or another, I thought that even though the competition may have been tougher, there was a possibility of more work there than there was just remaining here.

JL: Was it a challenge to you to go up there?

HC: Yes, it was.

JL: How did the people propose to stay at the status quo if the jobs, projects, were running out?

HC: Well, that hasn't actually happened yet, I guess. Opinions can differ. None of us were able to see very far ahead at that time, as we can now. It just struck me that that's the way it was going to be. And also, I thought that we needed to be located in a major city if we were going to do the advanced kind of projects.

JL: Who were the ones that wanted to remain at the status quo and not expand?

HC: Well, I think, Jim Howland was less enthused about it than some of the rest of us. I don't remember about Burke. I don't think he had a strong feeling either way. I think both Archie and Ralph, at that time, were kind of in favor of it.

JL: You were a success in Seattle?

HC: It took a while. We had some work to carry us over; some things that we were already doing in Pasco and Kennewick and Richland, Washington, and Yakima and Pendleton and Wenatchee-these are all east of the mountains-and Centralia, I guess, which is south of Seattle. So we had some work to keep us so it wasn't completely an empty shop, and we worked on those jobs and just kept at it. It took about five years before the office was, I think, really paying for itself.

JL: Would you consider that one of the major challenges in your time with the firm?

HC: Oh, I suppose, yeh. It was a busy time, an interesting time. And frankly, I like Seattle better than Corvallis. I enjoyed living there. It was a different atmosphere.

JL: Could you have stayed up there?

HC: Oh, I suppose I could have. See, along, when I was in Seattle we started an office in Portland and worked out the merger with Clair Hill and Associates, so that by about 1971, when I moved back from Seattle, we had become a major firm. I don't remember what the total employees were, but four or five hundred by then, which meant that it took a lot more time from a management standpoint to keep everything going; and the integrating with Clair Hill and Associates group needed some careful handling; Archie and Jim, primarily, were trying to manage that and needed some more help; and then we got the so-called discipline system installed, and 1 was supposed to be in charge of the discipline operations. It just didn't look like handling it out of Seattle was going to work very well. The way we operate now, with the kind of travel and communications we have, we wouldn't necessarily have to do that [operate it out of Corvallis]. At that time, I thought you did.

JL: Have you considered moving back to Seattle after you retire?

HC: Oh, haven't seriously considered it. We had a house on Vashon Island up there, a nice one on the water, but we sold it when we left. If Cleo and I had kept the house, we might consider moving back there.

JL: Oh. That's a beautiful area. By the way, this is probably a naive question, but your firm is in Bellevue, isn't it? It's not in Seattle. Is there a reason why it's not in Seattle?

HC: (Chuckle) . Well, we started out in Seattle. We had an office in downtown Seattle in the Logan Building at (pause) can't remember; it's a block from the Olympic Hotel; and we were there until 1969 or 1970. We needed more space; we couldn't find it there in that building; it was difficult all around Seattle; that was before they had started to build most of those big office buildings down there. And at that time, I was no longer managing the Seattle office; I was doing what was called the engineering production study. Jim Poirot couldn't find any other solution, and a canvas of the employees indicated that they would all like to live in Bellevue, and so eventually we found this space over there which is more economical. Some of us were concerned, including me, that when you moved out of the big city and couldn't say you came from Seattle, that people would not recognize you as a major operation, and that big City of Seattle wouldn't want to hire us because we weren't operating within the city limits. I would say that in general, that that concern didn't pan out to be that important. We might have lost a little, and we still call it the Seattle office even though its address is Bellevue. We do that a lot. The Denver office is not really in Denver; it's in Littleton, but the post office box address is Denver. (Chuckle)

JL: What would you have done if you had been in Seattle still?

HC: I would probably have stayed in Seattle.

JL: Just found some place and paid the higher price?

HC: I don't know how I would have done it, but I wouldn't have considered as strongly as Jim did, the possibility of going to Bellevue.

JL: What were some of the most difficult times for you and the firm as you look back on the last thirty-six years?

HC: (chuckle) Oh, the two or three times when the workload fell off, and we had to let people go, and we were having trouble making ends meet.

JL: When did that happen? Are you referring to your financial difficulties when you first commenced operating?

HC: No. It seemed to me there were about three times when we had to reduce the staff. One of them was in 1975/1976, and there was at least one other time in the sixties somewhere. I can't remember when it was now but we were off and going. Jim Howland could tell you better than I can.

JL: Do you consider those the most difficult times for you personally?

HC: I think particularly the 1975 one because I was President at that time. That was a difficult one. You don't, I don't think we had problems, if you want to consider them problems, all the time. There were individual ones with particular projects, or people, or something like that which you handled as they came [but we had an occasional real problem like] the times when we were having trouble finding enough work to do, or had an overall problem, not the normal run of the mill type of things that you worked on from day-to-day; so that's why I guess I consider those about as difficult as any of the times that we had.

JL: Were there times when you just wanted to give up and just say, "It's too much work and I don't want to do it anymore. I want a change of career or direction"?

HC: Oh, I don't personally remember any time when I got quite that bad. Sure, you got discouraged at times. But, you know, you always had, at least in this organization, other people to talk to. If you really were discouraged, you'd go sit down and talk it over. I'd go and talk to Archie or to Jim-somebody. And we'd hassle it out and kind of get each other back on the track again. So I never really considered quitting or giving it all up. By the time it came about time for me to retire, which was in 1979 I guess or 1980, I think I was getting a little tired of working at it that hard for that long.

JL: I can imagine. You haven't retired yet as far as I can see.

HC: Well, I don't get to work until about 10:00 a.m. and I don't always come. I'm not really working very hard now.

JL: What were some of the highlights, the high points, in your career here? (pause)

HC: Well, moving to Seattle and opening that office had to be a high point, I guess, and the reorganization to install the so-called discipline concept.

JL: You saw that as a positive move then?

HC: Ummm, hummm. Yes.

JL: Were all the other partners in agreement with going to that system?

HC: After we worked them over for a while, yeh. Oh, I think, [the times] when we were successful in obtaining some of the major projects were probably high points. If you ask me now to go back and name what those were, I'd have a hard time doing it.

JL: Take your time.

HC: One was a big water supply project for the City of Richland, Washington.

JL: Why was that project a high point, particularly more than others?

HC: It was a big treatment plant, larger than others and fairly comprehensive, one that we worked all the way through from the beginning study phase clear into completion of construction and operation. I suppose another one was the major project we had for the external facilities for the Boeing 747 plant there north of Seattle. And the Foothills water supply project for Denver was a major one.

JL: Are you saying major in size or complexity or...? Are they highlights because you...

HC: In that case, both.

JL: Was the fact you were being recognized on a large scale-nationally- exciting?

HC: Well, probably, although I didn't have, or wasn't as directly connected with this. Of course, winning that award for the Tahoe advanced waste treatment plant was a highlight. And so also was the project for the Occoquan advanced waste treatment plant near Washington, D.C. I don't remember, but at the time it was close to one of the biggest we'd ever done. And then-of course, I didn't have very much directly to do with this either-was the Milwaukee project which we're still working on. Some of the littler projects that didn't make much of a splash to anybody else were kind of milestones, I guess, to some of us because of what they represented. We got the job early in-I can't remember if it was in the late 1940s or the real early 1950s-to design the water treatment plant on the Willamette River here for the city of Corvallis which was a major step as far as our advance into sophisticated treatment work was concerned. (pause) Those are the highlights that kind of come to my mind right now.

JL: How did you like being President? Was that a highlight for you?

HC: Oh, it had its satisfactions and, you know, you got recognition from it and it was interesting and exciting. It was hard work. I had been so close to the management of the firm and the direction, too, I guess, for so long that it wasn't a major shift as far as I was concerned. It took some reorganization and some assigning of duties different than before, but it didn't require a great deal of reorientation as far as my approach or my attitude was concerned.

JL: Why do you think you were chosen as President over, say, Archie Rice, or one of the others? What qualities do you possess?

HC: Well, (chuckle) that was kind of a difficult time. Jim Howland had been President and General Manager and Chairman of the Board and all that, you know, for twenty-five years or something like that, and he felt that he'd been at it long enough and that somebody else ought to be President. It wasn't good to carry something on that long. That's a surprising thing from somebody who's been at it that long to come to that conclusion at that stage, and I think Jim is an unusual person to be able to do that. Nevertheless, he did. He says, "I'm going to quit. I'm going to resign as President." I can't remember when it was now. And so the Board went through a process of trying to figure out who should be the next one. There were five or six candidates at that time, all of whom were, I guess, you'd have to say, in their late thirties or early forties maybe; and some of the people were concerned that a man that young might end up having to be President again for twenty years and may be that wasn't the right thing; and there wasn't a strong consensus for any one of those people.

I guess I [might] just as well tell you who they were as well as I can remember them. You'd better check this with Jim Howland because he was more directly involved. It was Jim Poirot, Les Wierson, Sid Lasswell, Earl Reynolds, Bob Adams. I think that was about it. Anyway, the Board was having a real problem trying to come up with the right answer and one thing or another; and so I think, when it really came down to it, they decided they would see if they could get me to be President for a period of two or three years as a kind of transition from Jim-who had been kind of running the whole show-to a different kind of an organization where we were just getting the discipline system started and one thing or another, with the idea that part of my job would be to resolve the selection-of-a-president problem and work out a transition, which is essentially what happened. After being the President for a couple of years, I went through the process of appointing a committee to establish the criteria for selection of the President and Chairman of the Board, which we decided would be two separate jobs. And then we went through the process of selection and Harlan was made the President and I was Chairman of the Board for two or three years. When I retired, Earl became Chairman of the Board and I was vice-chairman of the Board for a year. That was a transition.

JL: Why did they choose you as the President over others?

HC: Archie didn't want to do it; he said that was not for him. Burke, I guess you'll have to say, was more inclined toward the technical and the design analytical direction. Ralph Roderick, I think, had retired or was retiring. Fred Merryfield was not, at that time, a possibility, we didn't think. And Clair had his hands full getting Redding shifted to Harlan Moyer who was taking over as manager. And unless you went to one of the younger group, on which nobody could really kind of come to a consensus, why, I was about the only one left.

JL: So, you're saying it was because you were the only one and not because of your style of administration?

HC: Yeh, yeh. I think they felt that I could pull the thing together and get everybody working together without having a big bunch of internal warfare, because I had the time and the stature and everybody knew me well enough that I could get the thing across without hullabaloo; and I guess that's probably true.

JL: Someone described you as charismatic and a democratic leader.

HC: (chuckle) I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. Democratic or autocratic?

JL: Actually, democratic.

HC: Well, I guess that's right. I'm not an autocrat. I try to get people to do things because they think that's the right solution and they're in favor of it, rather than just telling them to do it. I try to give people a chance to use their own initiative and figure out their own ways of going about getting something done within the limits of what we've set out goals or our objectives that we're trying to meet, and therefore give people a chance to use their own initiative and to try to back them up in accomplishing this. It doesn't always work. Sometimes it's hard to sit there and watch somebody do something a different way than you would do it, particularly if it turns out that it doesn't work very well that way. But I think you've got to have the patience to let people use their own judgment or initiative, or you're going to have an enthusiastic, driving, interested and motivated organization.

JL: How does that style compare to, say, Jim Howland's?

HC: Oh. Similar, I think. Jim was a little more autocratic on some things and I guess you'd have to say less so on others. I don't think either one of us ever could be considered as directive-type managers. We both believed in giving people their heads. If you talk to Jim, you might ask him about his favorite saying in managing this outfit. It's not like the typical pyramid where the manager sits here and all the lines of authority go down this way. It's more like a man on the ground in a fairly high wind with about forty gas-filled balloons on long strings, and you're sitting here trying to get them all into some kind of order.

JL: You mean because of the independence and the strong will of all the others?

HC: The drive that all these people have on their own.

JL: That must be very difficult to manage.

HC: Well, yeh. That's, you know, where it takes the patience, and the understanding that everybody's not going to do everything quite the way you will and sometimes they'll take off and get you involved in things that you really didn't want to get involved in at all, so you kind of have to watch and keep your eyes open to see what's happening.

JL: Do you think the other partners would have been capable of holding on to these balloons?

HC: Yeh, I think so. I think it was always a matter of getting everybody pulled together and, you know, the other partners did a lot of management. Ralph Roderick managed the Corvallis office at a time when it was practically the only major office we had. And Burke managed the electrical and mechanical work for a long time. Archie, actually, was president of what is now known as MicroFLOC, and he managed that; built it from practically nothing to a good-sized organization.

JL: Did he have a democratic way of administering too?

HC: Not so much.

JL: What do you feel personally were a few of your greatest achievements working with the firm?

HC: Oh, I don't know. I suppose the move to Seattle and building the Seattle operation into what it eventually became has to be one achievement that I'm pleased about. And I suppose that I was satisfied with the job I did as President: getting the organization into the mode in which it now operates.

JL: What aspect of engineering and being part of CH2M HILL did you enjoy the most?

HC: Oh, I guess I enjoyed most the technical design work, the project or technical project work that I did. I would like to continue to do that to some extent.

JL: Are you going to continue that even after retirement?

HC: Well, yeh. I'm chairman of what we call the Advisory Board for the Foothills Project in Denver which is not exactly technical design work but it is, nevertheless, the management, direction and construction operation of that whole project. I've been involved in finalizing of the contracts and one thing or another in Trinidad, and I work on the committee that's developing design guidelines for designing water, wastewater, and similar facilities against earthquakes. So, from those kinds of things, I'm going to keep dabbling some, I hope.

JL: If you could start the firm all over again, what would you do differently?

HC: (chuckle) Well, I'd like to think I probably might not start it in Corvallis, but that's where Fred Merryfield was, and there might have been no other way to do it.

JL: You mean start it in a larger city or more centrally located?

HC: Yeh.

JL: What has been the disadvantage of being in Corvallis?

HC: Well, you say, what was the disadvantage? The location, after the organization had grown some, of course. You know, we got our start by coming from a small town and working for small towns, and it might not have been so easy if you'd started in Portland. Although, I think probably we could have done it. In the initial status working out of Corvallis had some advantages until you got to the point where you were covering three or four stages instead of one, and then it ceased to be that way. I don't know what else I might have done differently. I suppose, looking back on it now, I might have tried to build a stronger mechanical and electrical group than we did initially. Eventually we got there but I think we might have put more emphasis on that to begin with. But [the emphasis you put depends upon the] kind of function of the jobs that you have to do and what it takes to get them done. I don't know what else I'd have really done differently. Looking back on it, there probably are dozens of decisions that weren't very good moves, yet, sooner or later, they all eventually worked out. I think some of our office expansions that we undertook were not really very wise. The one to Alaska and the one to, oh, let's see, some of the expansions of Florida were not probably the best decisions.

JL: The merger?

HC: Oh, I think the merger was all right. The merger with Black, Crow & Eidsness is a mixed bag in a sense. It took us a long time to get it squared around to where it was working properly and not a drain on the rest of the organization. But, if we hadn't done that, I don't think we would have ever had the growth and the stature nationwide that we have today. So, who knows?

JL: How did you feel about women professionals being employed with the firm? Did you have any reluctance hiring women?

HC: Well, I don't recognize that I had any reluctance, and I think I've tried to support it. You know, there are all shades of professionals, from women engineers to women accountants and administrative managers and all those kinds of things. I suppose that there was some question in my mind originally. I've watched some of the girls that have come in as engineers, and I have been particularly involved with the women that have worked in the administrative and those kinds of positions, and I think it should be supported. I think that the firm, as a whole, is probably almost chauvinistic in its acceptance of women as executives, as managers. I think they are being pretty well accepted as technical designers and technicians, but I think the engineers, of which the firm is primarily made up, have considerable difficulty accepting the fact that they have to accept direction from a woman.

JL: Is anything being done about that or can anything be done?

HC: Yeh. We keep trying to work on it and, of course, the whole problem of discrimination-sex and race and color too-is involved. We've got Willie Loud and one of his duties is to work on that problem, and we're trying to get it corrected. It's a slow process because you don't change a person's attitude, particularly the older ones, just by writing a directive or giving them a lecture. You have to try to develop an atmosphere that will allow these people a chance to demonstrate what they can do, and then let them, the minorities, women or whatever, prove or show that they can perform and produce. When you do that, you generally get acceptance, I think. I don't think we're highly successful in that direction.

JL: Even with the younger engineers?

HC: I think they're better off because they're younger.

JL: But you personally haven't had any problem?

HC: Yeh, I don't think I have. I don't personally have problems accepting them. I have had problems getting people, women particularly, who I feel are capable to take more responsibility. Now that problem is getting them accepted by others.

JL: We've talked about the contributions of all the original partners but we haven't spoken about Clair Hill. Can you talk about him and his contributions to the firm?

HC: Well, of course, Clair started out in this business in Redding about the same time, I think, that we started out here in Corvallis. Or maybe even a little ahead of that. He started in the late 1930s and then went to war, came back and started again. So that, you know, he kind of went along parallel with us, although, I think a lot of his work initially was in surveying and mapping, whereas ours was in the design area, particularly in the water and wastewater field. Clair did a real job in building that organization up to whatever it was at the time that we merged. I think we kind of saw things eye-to-eye in terms of how to manage it, although Clair didn't run his organization with the free and democratic approach that we used. It was pretty much a one-man show until he began to realize that, unless he set up some kind of a system where the ownership could be transferred, it was going to be hard for him to realize anything out of it. At that time we got to working together and he got to following some of our concepts on ownership and eventually we put the two firms together. I have never been really close to Clair in terms of working day-to-day with him because at the time I took over as President, Clair had turned the management of the Redding operations over to Harlan. Of course, Clair was on the Board of Directors for several years and I was working with him at that time. I think Clair's contribution was in terms of being able to spot opportunities and not being afraid to try to take advantage of them. And sometimes, in hindsight, those were mistakes, but also sometimes they were real good moves. I think it was kind of Clair's instigation, along with Roderick, that we started the San Francisco office. That was even before the merger. We had a common office there with Clair Hill and Associates. And he started the Alaska operation before the merger. So, Clair had the ability to recognize good people and to get them on board, and probably less concern about what the other parts of the organization would think about his decisions. This was partly because he didn't have major partners he had to answer to, like we did, so for that reason, I think he operated much more efficiently in the earlier stages than we did.

JL: Much more efficiently?

HC: He didn't fuss around about the decisions-he just made them.

JL: It would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?

HC: Yeh. He developed a fine reputation in California. Knew an awful lot of people and still is a great benefit to us because of that. Constantly on the go and I think he still is.

JL: Were there those that wanted to remain at the same level of growth and not expand at the time the merger was being discussed?

HC: Yeh. Some of the people in Redding didn't want to do it, and they never were very happy with it. I guess most of us up here kind of thought it was a good idea by that time.

JL: Because you were expanding into California?

HC: Ummm, hummm.

JL: Would you like to say anything else about Clair Hill's contribution?

HC: Well, yeh. I guess Clair was considerably responsible for the merger. He felt it was highly desirable, and could see that the two organizations could put together and accomplish quite a bit in California; and he was probably going to have trouble doing it himself. So I think you have to give him credit for keeping at the merger, trying to work with Jim Howland. The two of them really ended up working it out, overcoming obstacles and finally getting it put together.

JL: I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't merged with CH2M?

HC: I don't know. At the time, you know, we were doing a lot of things together. We could have kept right on going that way, working joint ventures and one thing or another. That's probably what would have happened.

JL: But just speculating, what would have happened when he retired from his firm?

HC: Well, he would have probably turned it over to the group of Harlan. Jack Jensen and Alan Hill and half a dozen others.

HC: Well, he would have probably turned it over to the group of Harlan. Jack Jensen and Alan Hill and half a dozen others that were working and were part of the organization then. He had started to do that before we merged, you see.

JL: I want to ask this now. We've discussed the contributions I think of everybody-Howland, Hayes, Merryfield, Rice, and Roderick and Hill. I'd like you to talk about your own contributions some more, one very significant contribution being the bringing of computers into the firm.

HC: Well, the computer is a result, basically, of the engineering production study that I developed, a part of which was to try to look ahead and see where the profession was going, and try to work out what steps CH2M, which it was at that time, ought to be taking to stay up with the advances in the profession. The more you got into that, the more obvious it became that the use of computers was going to be a coming thing.

JL: When did you do this study?

HC: Are you talking about the Policies and Procedures Manual?

JL: No.

HC: Policies and Procedures Manual is one of the results, like the computers are one of the results, of the engineering production study.

JL: This was in 1968 that you did this study?

HC: Yeh. This study was made at the request of Rice and Howland, because Archie I think had convinced Jim that we needed to have some long-range planning. That's what we call it now; we didn't know what it was then. "The purpose of the study was to develop methods to improve the efficiency and technical excellence of the services that CH2M provides, which at the same time would be a challenge and result in a sense of accomplishment for CH2M people." I went at that by first figuring out how we were doing things now, what should be done, and how to do what should be done.

JL: Why did they choose you to do this? Why didn't Archie Rice do it himself?

HC: I don't know. Maybe that (chuckles)

JL: We're talking about your contribution, so you can certainly brag about yourself.

HC: Well, the thing they told me was that they thought that I was the best guy to do it, because I knew how the whole thing operated, and I started the regional office and all this stuff. I was suspicious, at the time, that they didn't think I was making a very strong contribution in Seattle and that maybe I needed another job-And I kind of think there might have been some truth in that- oh, I guess not. I think they did feel that they weren't making the best use of whatever abilities I had, and that I might be good at this and we had somebody that could take on my work and make it run in the Seattle office, and therefore I could do that. And Archie was so involved and Jim both with the day-to-day operation of the company and all that stuff, that that's what we decided to do.

JL: So you agreed with them that your capabilities weren't being put to the best use, then?

HC: Oh, I think I was kind of tickled with the challenge that this gave me. It was a break. I'd been working on projects hammer-and-tongs for twenty, over twenty years, and so this gave me something new to get my teeth into.

JL: So in this study you discovered or you surmised, that computers were something that the firm should acquire?

HC: Yeh. The third step, which is what to do about how to do the things we should be doing, it seemed obvious to me that a computer was one of the things that we were going to have to get cracking on.

JL: What do the others think of that?

HC: Oh, they agreed with it in principle, but it was awful hard to get them to do it. We first signed up with General Electric, who had a big computer somewhere that you could use with a telephone line to an old telex machine. Remember how they used to-oh, you may have never seen one-they used to send telegrams by typing the information into a machine which sent some kind of electronic signals to the receiving end, and it would be typed back again. No different than our current electronic system, just very elementary. And we found a couple of guys in Seattle that were interested in that and we started to use it. A couple of years later we bought the first computer of our own which was an IBM 1130, I think the number was-by today's standards, this [the 1130] wouldn't even come close to being a microcomputer-and set it up down here, and put somebody in charge of it, then tried to get people to use it-and ran into a lot of reasons why they shouldn't. "I could do it by hand faster", or "I don't like to do it because I don't know what's happening", or "Working out by hand's better". I guess it took us five years before we really got the full utilization out of the computer. And then all of a sudden it took off.

JL: Wasn't there some resistance from the other principals? Because of experiences like Clair Hill's, who I guess had a terrible experience with computers?

HC: Well, he tried to go into the business of providing computer service.

JL: Was it because of the initial outlay of capital there was some resistance?

HC: Our people you mean? No, they didn't know quite how to use it; it was change, and they resisted it. We put Ken Van Dusen in charge of it. He was an aggressive type who made people mad half the time, but also pushed hard to do everything we could by computer; and he was pretty quick and knew the sewer and water business well enough so he could make the applications to that field. So we finally got it underway.

JL: Do you consider that to be one of your more significant achievements?

HC: Oh, I guess so. Except that the-I guess the thing I contributed was getting us started in a specific, consistent, determined way early enough that we were able to get out ahead of most of the other people. It would have happened eventually, we couldn't have prevented it.

JL: If you hadn't done the study, though, you wouldn't have realized its importance and, or CH2M wouldn't have gotten involved with computers until everybody else did?

HC: Well, I don't think we would have gotten started in it as rapidly as we did.

JL: Somebody said, one of the other people I talked with, this was his quote, "If Holly is the brains of CH2M, why then Jim is the soul of CH2M."

HC: (chuckles). That's interesting. Why would that person say that?

JL: I guess that must be the way it appears to them.

HC: I don't consider myself the brains of CH2M. I really consider Archie is. But be that as it may, Jim was the one who shows the most concern about people and individuals and their welfare. And I guess they'd say what they did about me because I'm the one that's always looking for some way to improve the operation, or to solve the problems of engineering that we face.

JL: Why do you say Archie should be characterized as the brains of CH2M?

HC: Because he's smarter than I am. Half the ideas that I put together and developed I got from him or we got from each other, by fighting and arguing and brainstorming and so forth.

JL: Do you feel, then, that you were more comfortable with Archie than with the other principals?

HC: I guess so. Probably. As long as you don't get to talking about certain things like politics.

JL: Oh, you differ there?

HC: Oh yeah. I'm much more conservative-Archie's pretty liberal. You see, his dad was a contractor and had a real tough time in the depression, and Archie has always been a stalwart Democrat: believed in unions and in making the government help the underprivileged. That's not quite the way to state it, but he believed in considering the needs of the less privileged compared to some of us who tend to feel that everybody who wants to work hard enough can get where he wants to go within reason.

JL: Is that typical of people in these positions?

HC: Sure is. In a way-he, Archie, probably accepts that the liberal view, as a basic philosophy, but he can get as mad at the government as anybody else.

JL: What other contributions do you think you've made to the firm's development?

HC: Well, I guess the initial development of the business in eastern Washington and Oregon, which eventually led to the development of the Seattle office. The Seattle office development I think, was a major contribution. We went up there and started from nothing and in ten years built it to something bigger than Corvallis was at the time we left Corvallis. The engineering production study, and the development of the concepts of the organization, and the methods that resulted from that. You can find most of the things we're doing today in there somewhere if you want to look hard enough; they aren't by the same names and they don't fit in the organization in exactly the same way, but most of them are there. And the Policy and Procedure Manual, which was initially my effort, and the computer, and the reorganization of the firm to mesh in the regional and the discipline system-not the idea, but the implementing of it. And the developments of the organization in terms of the Board of Directors, and the Chairman of the Board, and the President, and their different responsibilities. Can't think of anything else.

JL: Would you consider yourself charismatic?

HC: Some, when I'm cranked up to be. I mean, when I'm excited or fascinated or interested or somehow intrigued, motivated.

JL: So people look to you as a leader, then?

HC: I guess so.

JL: Do you think more so than the others?

HC: I don't know. Never thought about that. I don't think they look at me as more of a leader than they do Jim, I think they look at me to lead them in different ways than Jim does.

JL: What do you mean by that-you mean style-wise, or different directions? Different changes?

HC: Well, I think it goes back to the same thing that somebody said a while ago. Jim will lead them in the direction of having a compatible, motivated, energetic, well-knit group of people. My tendency is to lead them into accomplishing great things technically or otherwise.

JL: Several others I talked to saw you as a stabilizing influence.

HC: Yeh, (chuckles) I think that's right. I have at times been able to settle down violent disagreements by trying to be kind of cool about it and keep people off the ceiling, and to keep their heads straight. Try not to let people get carried away with things until they've thought them out. Yeh, I guess I have been a stabilizing influence.

JL: I was told that you were responsible for having an attorney on the staff-a in-house attorney. Could you comment on that?

HC: Okay. Yeh. At one time, in the early days, when the tendency to sue people, particularly professionals, wasn't near as bad as it has become, or as prevalent as it has become-I won't say it necessarily is bad-and, I guess as a part of the engineering production study, I discovered that you could buy, or get insurance to insure yourself against the damages due to errors and omissions as it was called, in the plans or engineering that we did. And as a part of that, we-the consulting engineer group-finally organized our own-well, I arranged for us to get this kind of insurance. It started out one hundred thousand dollars maximum limit, I think. It's now I believe twenty million. But in the process of that, the insurance company came up with a program to train the people in what they call loss prevention, which is what you have to do to minimize the losses from errors, omissions, and mistakes. When you get right down to it, loss prevention is nothing more than doing the job right the way that book says. There's a five-foot shelf of books we have written that will tell you how to do that, that we've developed here. And in the process of that, I got to working with insurance people on this liability and claim system, and initially made a study which Len Weber helped me with. Len was a lawyer-an engineer too, but had gotten a law degree in Texas or Oklahoma where he worked on the oil well fields or something. So he helped me with this program and we developed a loss prevention program, and as a result, Len just kind of naturally gravitated into the legal end of the engineering business. He had been working on highways and other things, but obviously was more interested in the legal aspects of it, and since he was already working for us, why we gradually worked him into handling most of the legal stuff. And I guess really it was more accident than deliberate calculation. As soon as we had a lawyer, why, then we began to give him things like a partnership agreement, or the corporate papers and the contracts and all of this kind of stuff. But I guess I did start it, yeah, from that standpoint. More by the process of solving the problem than in the deliberate thought to go out and get the legal staff.

JL: But it turned out that an attorney is very necessary, then?

HC: Yeh. One way or the other, and it's a full-time job. I'm sure it is.

JL: Also you were responsible for getting a representative in Washington, D.C.?

HC: No, I don't really think I can take credit for that. I made a couple of studies for that when I was Chairman of the Board, and I couldn't satisfy myself that we could afford it, or rather that it would be cost-effective, part of the reason being, I didn't know who to get. My concern was that we'd hire a retired colonel or we'd get applications from those kind of people; you know, ex-army, navy, public, Federal employees who had got up to fairly high status and were now retired, they would want to be our Washington D.C. representative. I've watched some of them and all they did was go to cocktail parties and take their favorite potential "client" to lunch. I didn't think they were accomplishing anything. But after Earl became chairman he got to looking at this thing some more and discussing it. It so happens that he mentioned this to Dick Corrigan, the man who is our Washington D.C. representative, who had that position with the American Consulting Engineers Council-nationwide for all of the consulting engineering firms. Earl discovered that Dick Corrigan might be interested in going to work for us. He was kind of tired of working for a group that had no consistent or very good management. Not very good potential; he was as far as he could go. So Earl hired him.

JL: So it wasn't your idea?

HC: Well, it was an idea that I'd been kicking around, I never could figure out a way to make it work to my own satisfaction. And if I'd still been President and discovered this about Dick, I'm sure I would've done it then.

JL: Has it been a positive move, to hire this representative?

HC: Well, I think it has been, yeah. And when it comes now to things like the Super fund project and these others, I'm sure we needed that badly.

JL: Anything else about your contributions?

HC: Don't think of anything more.

JL: What are the major strengths of your firm today?

HC: Its technical capability; its broadly-based organization which gives it the ability to apply the technical knowledge wherever it's needed; its stability because of primarily, I guess, its ownership policy. The turnover is very low, at least in terms of technical people; I can't say that for the clerical types.

JL: To what do you attribute the low turnover rate in your firm?

HC: Well, a lot of them stay because they own part of it; and a lot of them stay because they recognize that they have an opportunity to own part of it, to get a piece of the action; and I think [because of the] general management's attitude that allows people to go ahead and, within the limits of the objective that they're trying to accomplish, to use their own initiative to get the job done. How does that compare with the way other firms of this type are run? We are much more open, much less dictatorial. People have a lot more freedom to go and do whatever they want to when they want to. They don't have to get permission for a lot of things that a lot of firms are very sticky about. And that hasn't been taken advantage of over the years by your people? Oh, at times, I guess. Not normally, I don't think. Sure, sometimes you get burned but also you get an awful lot of loyalty and good, honest effort as a result of it.

JL: So, you've got some fine individuals that work for the firm?

HC: Ummm, hummm, yeh.

JL: Perhaps others don't?

HC: Well, you know, the guy that isn't willing to have that kind of an attitude, to really put out, probably isn't going to last very long. Nobody will want him on their team and the first thing you know you can't find things for him to do. And we've got people like that.

JL: Can you talk about some of the weaknesses in the firm?

HC: Well, I suppose some of the weaknesses are that we probably are much less efficient than we ought to be because of this tendency to allow people to use their own initiative. As a result, we don't do as well as we should on the routine kinds of things that ought to be done by some kind of standard procedure, the same every place and therefore mass produced with the computers or something else. I don't know whether you've heard anybody complain but we finally instigated this system of expense accounting that is a chore, but it is probably the way ninety percent of businesses do it. From the word go we had never really been very methodical about that; we just paid people whatever expenses they put down. Of course, when we started to get audited by the IRS and the defense and the government agencies, boy, we had to put this system in, but there have been a terrible lot of complaints and everybody still doesn't like it. You know, if you worked for IBM or if you worked for one of the other big consulting engineers firms or you worked for almost any big company, you probably would have started right out doing expense accounts the way we are doing them right now; but some of us around here haven't had to make it out that way for thirty or forty years and we don't like change. So there are a whole series of things that I think we probably don't do very efficiently because of that [tendency to allow people to use their own initiative.] We have a very high overhead relative to other firms in our business and this is partly because of that factor of being fairly generous about allowing the people to take their heads; and also because we do have a large number of regional offices each one of which requires its own management and accounting, and this kind of group is bound to be less efficient than if you had all two thousand in one building, one accounting system and one of everything. This becomes difficult because it means we have to charge higher fees than other people because our overhead is higher.

JL: But you do better work?

HC: We think we do, particularly in terms of individual attention that you can give to the work.

JL: So clients are attracted to you because of that individual attention and because of your reputation?

HC: I think so.

JL: Where do you see the firm heading in the future?

HC: (chuckle)

JL: More expansion?

HC: Well, only in terms of the fact that today's projects are becoming so large and so complex that it takes a major organization to complete, for example, the famous Milwaukee project or [the one we may] eventually do in Biloxi in Mississippi. Those kind of things are what causes us to expand in the project delivery management area. Whether we will grow, you know, as rapidly as we have in the past in terms of people, I don't know. I think we will continue to increase in terms of staff size but probably not at the rate we have over the past ten or fifteen years. Because, you know, an expansion of five percent a year now means you are adding one hundred people whereas five percent when you only had a hundred in the first place was only five, so that now you just don't grow that fast. And I think that the trend is going to be toward the program management approach which, to some extent, is going to change the complexion of the type of people that we have and the type of work that we do. But it looks to me that in general that's probably the way it's going to go because somehow it just isn't the simple operation that it was when we started thirty-five years ago. If somebody says, "I need a pipeline from here to here, how big should it be?" And we told him and he said, "All right, let's go. How much would it cost?" To get the financing worked up right, you would size the reservoir, for example on the basis probably of about how big a one you could get on the site and be reasonably economical. Nowadays you don't do it that way. You've got to go through environmental impact studies and God knows what else before you can even get started.

JL: What about other fields of work? You are getting into the energy field and food production. Any other?

HC: Yeh. Those are all natural outgrowths of the kind of work we are doing. And, as you know, we've got this OMI-Operations Management organization-which is going to take on the job of contract operation of treatment facilities, and those types of things, so we will probably go in that direction. Just technical complexity of the facilities that we now design is so far ahead of where it was thirty years ago that you just have to continually expand and adjust your staff and your capabilities to meet today's highly advanced, complex requirements.

JL: Are you entering more into the private sector?

HC: Yeh. I think we have tapped it pretty well. We are doing a lot of those kinds of things for private companies. Oh, I think that the public works types of projects will still be a major part of our operation.

JL: Do you think the employees of today and the future can carry on the quality and personal touch that you original partners nurtured?

HC: Well, I hope so. The tendency, of course, as you grow is to lose that individual pride and so forth. But one of the reasons I think we may be able to keep it is that we keep the organization into manageable groups in regional offices and so forth, where they can become a close enough knit organization so that they know something about what's going on and can feel a part of it whereas, if you took all of those people and put them in one great big building, most of them wouldn't feel like they've got any share in what's happening. So if you are going to maintain that kind of an attitude it's going to have to be as a result of the kind of an organization we're running. Whether that will carry on and to what extent and for how far, I guess remains to be seen. You can see it now. If you get on one of the big projects, like the Milwaukee one where there are a couple of hundred people all working on the design of this facility, it's pretty hard to understand where the little piece that you're working on fits in the total. So, you know, the guy needs the chance also to go out and work on the small project where there are only two or three others assigned as well as on the great big ones.

JL: How can historical information about the firm's past be useful today?

HC: Oh, I suppose it would just keep us from making the same mistakes again. I hope that's what it might do.

JL: Then, how can you say that you don't think anybody will read this, or that it will be useful?

HC: If you handed me that, I'll put it in my briefcase and say, "that's gonna be interesting, I'll go read it. But it might still be there a year later. Not read, (chuckles)

JL: Are you saying that you think that reaction would be typical of people, or engineers, or CH2M employees, or what?

HC: Oh, I think it's fairly true in general about the engineering employees in CH2M who are busy; they don't even have the time to keep up with their technical field.

JL: Yeh, but when you're gone, don't you think the people in charge will want to know why a particular policy has put in motion and what the people were like that started it and why did they do the things they did-what was their thinking?

HC: I don't know, is there such a thing for IBM?

JL: Well, I don't know about IBM exactly, but it's getting more common among businesses.

HC: Yeh, I've read about it. I've noticed that a lot of people are doing this. Yeh, in some ways, it would probably be helpful. I hadn't really thought about the reasons for what this could do. I suppose it's important or desirable to set down the reasons why that's done...I got a book over there somewhere. Jim wants me to review. Yeh. It's called The Board of Director's Handbook, and it talks about a lot of the reasons why we're doing certain things and about certain policies and stuff, and it goes into some of the background. He mentioned that that had been compiled sort of in conjunction with this history.

JL: Does history in general interest you?

HC: Oh, yeh. My wife and I are talking about going on a trip to the Greek Islands late September where you fly over there and get on a cruise ship, you know and spend 10 days wandering around Athens and Crete and all those kind of places. And we've even gotten out the-who is it-the Durant's? There's a seven-volume history of the world by the Durants, man and wife. [William Janes and Ariel Durant]

JL: Oh yes! Didn't they just die recently? Committed suicide? It was in the newspaper.

HC: Is that true? I hadn't heard that. Anyway, we got out the volume on the Greek civilization, I don't remember what they call it, which goes way back. And it's been real fascinating to read.

JL: That's more interesting to you than local history, or family history?

HC: Family history is interesting to me. Did I tell you that Cleo is doing genealogical studies on both branches of our families? She's got some of her ancestors traced clear back to somewhere in Holland in the fourteenth century.

JL: That's a lot of work.

HC: With their crazy names, and one thing another. And that's interesting. Some of it. Like my (chuckles), I wasn't going to take all this time, but one of my Cornell ancestors, which goes clear back, was living on Long Island and his wife died in a fire because she caught her clothes on fire smoking a pipe; and her brother came forth with the fact that he had had a vision when he was asleep at night and the vision had told him that my descendant, her husband, had set fire to her; and the court accepted this as a vision and they hung my descendant.

JL: Where did you find that out?

HC: In a book on the Cornell history that we dug up somewhere (chuckles) .

JL: This must have been a few hundred years ago!

HC: Like when did the pilgrims come over...in the early 1600's?

JL: How interesting!

HC: If you remember at that time there was all that stuff about the witches and so forth, and they were hanging people for nothing better than somebody's declaration that she had come to them in a vision and threatened all this stuff, and they were burning them at the stake up in Massachusetts. So I guess it wasn't unusual for people to be accused of something, the only evidence being somebody's vision, which they accepted. Which meant, of course, I guess that you could get rid of your enemies pretty easy-you could have visions! (laughter) Oh, gee I got off the subject-

JL: That's okay. We were talking about the... What kind of history…

HC: I suppose you've got to realize too, that this is old hat to me. Maybe Jim's or Archie's may be interesting, but what I'm talking to you about is not very fascinating as far as I'm concerned. If we're talking about what we're going to be like ahead, that might be more interesting. But I don't say that I'm not interested in history because I am, particularly when it has a bearing on what's happened and why things were done. So from that standpoint this would be interesting. When you get through, you're going to have four or five volumes pretty thick. I guess the question in my mind is whether really very many will ever read clear through this. Possibly someday in the future someone can index the material and that would make it more useful. I didn't realize it would be as long as it is. But I think that it could be beneficial, and so I think the effort is worthwhile.

JL: Do you want to say anything about the place of history in the firm? Present and future?

HC: Well, yeh. I think history's important, but the thing I object to is that, "Well, we've always done it that way; why change?" I was reading an article somewhere just recently which says that the really well-run companies-the companies that advance as compared to the ones that stay in the same rut and lose their market share-are the ones that are always experimenting. Always trying something new. Aren't afraid to fail. Have at it, try it, if it doesn't work, throw it out, try something else. So, the attitude I object to is, "Well that's the way we've always done it and it's always worked, so why change?" I think that's wrong. I think you're going to end up in the grave when you do that.

JL: Is that an attitude that's prevalent in the firm?

HC: Yeh, some places.

JL: Where?

HC: Depends on whether or not they like your idea, I guess, maybe.

JL: Are you talking about higher up position?

HC: Umm hmmm.

JL: Oh, so what are you doing about that?

HC: I'm not doing anything, except whatever influence I can generate on it. But the guys that are running it are trying to do something about it. They're trying new things.

JL: You mean Harlan Moyer? He's not in that mode that you're talking about?

HC: No.

JL: So that's one thing you would like to say when you're talking about history's place in the firm's present and future-keep trying to change, keep trying to experiment?

HC: It probably would be a good thing to read back through this and make sure that something hasn't already been tried, too. I can't remember that there is anything like that in there, but we have tried things that have not worked. We have tried some of the things in that Engineering Production Study that didn't work out or haven't so far. Maybe they will eventually. That's probably been documented.

JL: Has it not?

HC: Probably not too well. One of the things I'm thinking about is I've got a thing in here I call the Project Information System, I think. (Pause, looking through manual.) Well, they're putting that together now. And I guess they call it the same thing. Oh no. The initials of this would be PIS, which translates to a four-letter word; so they called it Project Information Retrieval System, so they didn't have to go around saying piss all the time, (laughter)

JL: Yes, I guess you've got to think of those things. (chuckles)

HC: Well, I tried that for a while, or certain aspects of it. That was before we had the computer capability and a lot of other things. So now they're putting it into effect. But it's instigated primarily by the business development people who needed it probably the most, and therefore it's got some impetus that will make it fly.

JL: Well, you're saying that it didn't work when you tried it and now it is working?

HC: I don't know. It isn't really up and running yet. If they had known that you had tried it and it didn't work, then do you think they would not have tried it? Is that what you're saying? I told them it wouldn't work. I told them I tried it, and I stomped my feet. Told Harlan he was off his rocker, that he couldn't make that thing fly, and he says, "Aw, Goddamnit, I'm gonna try it anyway." Well, you shall see.

JL: Are there other things like this that...

HC: I don't think right now of any of the details in that thing that didn't work. I know there's a thing you can buy which is a catalog system. [looking through manual] I don't find it. Anyway, you can buy a commercial catalog system that's computerized and on microfilm. If you want to go around up there you can find whole walls of bookcases full of vendor's catalogs. Manufacturer's catalogs. And these guys have tried to put that together in a microwave system with an index, or one thing or another, so you can go pick the right cassette and look at the whole catalog. We tried that for a couple years and gave it up. They're now using a version of it on the federal specification information and some others, but I don't think even that has worked.

JL: So mistakes are being repeated then?

HC: Yeh, some. I don't think we do that too much. I hope not. I don't think we are. Something I want to add before we get through. Shall I do that now? It's about my wife's contribution to what I've done. I don't think I've covered it very well in there, but Cleo helped put me through graduate school. We were married while we were back East, and she used to type my thesis at night and work for somebody else during the day. When we first started the business here-she typed the first half a dozen reports, I think we made. I think she used to type those damn things in ten carbons. You've heard the famous story about the first office was in the bedroom of the little house we were renting over on Tyler Street, and I'd built a drafting table that let down from the wall, and when I was using the drafting table you couldn't get into the bed. But she typed the first few reports that we put out on a little L.C. Smith portable typewriter and made thirteen copies. That was before the days of electric typewriters.

JL: She typed thirteen copies?

HC: Umm hmmm. She did a lot of those kinds of things in the early days that I don't think this [interview] necessarily reflects. She's been that kind of support, and a lot of help, and somebody to discuss things with, for a long time. And so she made quite a contribution to whatever we've done-I've done-CH2M, too.

JL: Did the other wives participate quite as much as she did?

HC: Well, I don't think that's right. They participated in different ways.

JL: But I mean directly for the firm?

HC: Meisy Howland has always been a real help to Jim-going places and helping particularly with people and the firm parties and so forth. And, of course, Cleo for a long time went with me to the Water Works meetings and that kind of stuff. And all of those things are important.

JL: I have wondered how you juggled a busy firm life that took you away from home so much with a social life and a personal life, and seemingly did well at all of these activities?

HC: I didn't do very well in the social life and the personal life in some ways. I neglected my family to some extent. I haven't had a widely active social life. We do a certain amount, but it's not very much, partly because I'm gone or undependable. I have probably given more priority to the firm and my profession than I should have, considering the family's interest. Although I have two grown children and they seem to get along fine; I don't know whether more time or attention to them would make any difference or not.

JL: But if you had an opportunity to do it over again, and know what you know now, you would have probably spent more time with your family?

HC: I think so, probably. [It is a] question of how you are constituted. Engineers to some extent are kind of one track minded and, at. Well, if anybody had tried to be that [the hotshot] the partnership would have disintegrated. Often they do.

JL: What are your goals for the future?

HC: Oh, I don't know. Just have a pleasant time playing golf and doing a little work and enjoying myself. Are you going to continue working with the firm? Half-time or something less maybe.

JL: You play golf in Arizona? Is that where you go part of the year?

HC: Ummm hummm. Yes.

JL: Well, that sounds like the good life.

HC: (chuckle) Well, you know, it takes a certain amount of adjustment because you aren't really in the middle of things anymore; and even though you complain about always having to get to work and all the problems you had and one thing or another, when you don't have them, why, it sometimes seems kind of dull. I can imagine. [So you do] a little work to try to find something to keep yourself interested.

JL: And yet you wouldn't want to work full-time?

HC: I don't think so. People have worked full-time until they're eighty.

JL: Oh, yes. Look at our President, (laughter)

HC: Yeh. Wow.

JL: You have two children, is that correct?

HC: Ummm, hummm.

JL: What are they doing now and who are they?

HC: Well, our son is named Steven. He works for Heath-Techna in Seattle. And he has a son, Mathew, who's five, I guess. Our daughter is Cynthia. She is married to Bill Thach and lives in Denver and they have two children. The older one, Jason, is eleven and Rebecca is nine, I guess.

JL: Did either one of them become engineers? Is your son an engineer?

HC: No. He's an accountant.

JL: They didn't follow in their father's footsteps.

HC: No.

JL: Have either one of them started a business for themselves?

HC: My daughter is running a little quilt shop in Denver, which she is kind of starting on a shoestring. She heard about all your problems and successes I'm sure, so she knows something about having a business.

JL: I have other questions, but it's getting late. Is there anything else you would like to say?

HC: You've just about exhausted me of all of my recollections that I can think of. It's been kind of interesting rehashing some of those things I haven't thought of for a long time; but I think you have pretty well covered it. I told you that I thought I had neglected the contributions Cleo had made to all of this that has happened. That's all I can think of. I am talked out right now.

JL: Okay.