Father and son Sid and Mark Lasswell were among about 500 guests at an open house hosted by CH2M HILL at its new offices in Building 10 of the Hewlett-Packard campus in northeast Corvallis on Tuesday. The company relocated from its longtime-leased offices at Walnut and Kings Boulevards in September. The open house was a chance to show off new state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and recent projects, and for employees old and new to mingle with visitors.
Sid Lasswell was one of a handful of individuals there with an employee number less than 20. The long-time civil engineer retired in 1990 from CH2M HILL and quit working entirely in 1995 at the age of 70. His son, Mark, was the 1,496th employee when he joined in 1989. He is now the president of the TBG and is based out of the company headquarters in Englewood, Colorado.
The biggest project that Sid worked on in his time at CH2M HILL was a $2-million storm water tunnel system for the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was a huge project at the time. “I even remember when $100,000 was a big project,” he said.
On Tuesday, visitors could check out displays on CH2M HILL’s big civil, transportation, water, government facilities, infrastructure, and sustainability projects from all over the world.
Carl English-Young, a proposal manager and 28-year veteran of the firm, talked to visitors to the water projects room.
The projects on display in the room ranged from the $8 billion Changi East Wastewater Treatment Plant in Singapore to local projects such as Albany’s water treatment plant, wastewater system, and the new Talking Waters project — a constructed wetland meant to mitigate the temperature of effluent from Albany, Millersburg, and the Wah Chang plant.
CH2M HILL President and CEO Lee McIntire, center, and his wife, Susan, get a tour from Brandon Jones- Stanley, right, of the part of the new lab facilities that tests
CH2M HILL CEO Lee McIntire, along with his wife, Susan, and several other firm executives, were treated to a tour of the Albany projects Tuesday. McIntire was very excited about what he saw in Albany and praised the Talking Water Gardens project for its collaboration between two municipalities and a large private company and also for a creative solution that combines both technology and natural processes. The project has already garnered national awards, and he said the 50 acres of land that the project sits on will be a new parkland that is appreciated for years to come.
During the transition, more than a quarter of a million pounds of paper were recycled. The company also gave more than 15,000 three-ring binders away to the local school system and repurposed most of the building’s furnishings to groups such as United Way, Love INC, Jackson Street Youth Shelter, Vina Moses, Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill, the Oregon School for the Blind, Benton County, and the City of Corvallis.
Mayor Charlie Tomlinson publicly thanked McIntire for visiting Corvallis with members of his senior staff.
Tomlinson said that Corvallis owes a debt of gratitude to CH2M HILL co-founder Jim Howland, both for engineering projects and the company culture that he helped create. Howland died in 2008.
Tomlinson said that CH2M HILL has “left a lasting legacy in the City of Corvallis” and that CH2M HILL people have a unique civic pride. “I’ve seen them step up multiple times to volunteer in the civic life of our community,” he said.