Business Spotlight: GeoEngineers Inc.

In 2004, Alan Snider was presented with a tempting question: Sell the Springfield-based trenchless technology design business he founded in 1998, or keep going it on his own?

Snider had fielded three offers for Advantage Professional Services in two weeks. Pressure was mounting.

He wouldn't be sole owner anymore, but selling would allow his group to quickly expand its services. "We could do everything. We wouldn't have to sub anything out anymore," Snider recalls thinking.

Snider decided to accept the first offer he had received, from GeoEngineers Inc., a Seattle-based company founded in 1980. Since GeoEngineers' acquisition of Snider's business, the Springfield office has grown to 17 employees from six.

"We've tripled in size in four years. I think that attests to what GeoEngineers has brought to us," says Snider, a principal in the employee-owned company and manager of the Gulf South group, which operates offices in Springfield; Baton Rouge, La.; and Houston, Texas.

With 15 offices nationwide, GeoEngineers's bread-and-butter is horizontal directional drilling and trenchless technology design services, Snider says, but it offers a full spectrum of engineering services, including construction-site observation. Trenchless technology allows pipes to be run under areas where it would be impossible, disruptive or undesirable to dig trenches. Examples include highways, waterways and ecologically sensitive areas.

While trenchless technology can be used for small lines, GeoEngineers focuses on large projects, such as those used by large oil and natural gas companies. The work takes Snider around the world and keeps him out of the office an average of two weeks every month, he says.

"Let's put it this way: I have over a half-million (frequent-flier) miles on American. ... I've got 150,000 miles on United. ... I can't use them fast enough," Snider says.

A prime example of GeoEngineers' work is a project for which the Springfield office won a 2009 Grand Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Missouri. The project was the New Oil Export Line for BP Trinidad & Tobago LLC.

The company replaced an aging pipeline of dubious integrity that ran from BP's Galeota Point storage terminal to an offshore loading area. The new line reduced a tanker's fueling time from as long as 10 days to three or four days, Snider says.

The project was lauded on ACEC Missouri's Web site as "a world-record 5,780-feet (horizontal directional drilling) shore approach ... advancing the state of the art in HDD."

Exploring new technologies is integral to GeoEngineers' mission, says Managing Associate Jonathan Robison, who runs the day-to-day operations in Springfield.

GeoEngineers - No. 18 in a Top 50 ranking of firms by Trenchless Technology magazine - also handles many projects that don't involve trenchless technology.

Robison is working on a Branson project, the Suites at Fall Creek.

The resort incurred significant damage in last April's flood. "It eroded the bank to the point where some buildings were jeopardized" and the resort's marina was destroyed, says Chris Carson, project manager for Carson-Mitchell Inc., a Springfield engineering and building firm working with GeoEngineers on the project.

Carson says GeoEngineers was brought in by the resort's Las Vegas parent company, Diamond Resorts International.

"They were chosen for their ... sophistication and their general breadth of knowledge about these sorts of engineering issues," he says.

The project, which Carson says is ahead of schedule and under budget, is expected to cost between $5 million and $6 million and be complete in two to five months.

While GeoEngineers remains busy, it has taken a few hits since the recession took hold. Some projects have been canceled or delayed.

"We're still exceeding our target goals, but it's definitely taking a lot more work," Robison says.

"But we're growing. We just hired a person to sit up front, and over the past six months, we've hired two engineers and a geologist. We see a lot of potential, and we've got a lot of work on the books this year. We're going to be fine this year, but ... we definitely see the impact (of the economic downturn)."