News

By: Randy Moulton, PE

I started what would be a life-long career with Triad as its first summer technician in Morgantown in 1975.  We were temporarily operating out of the basement of the WVU Engineering Sciences Building (ESB) until we could find a suitable location to rent.  I was heading into my senior year as a civil engineering major and my assignment that summer was fairly simple – go to Dogwood Lakes Acid-Mine Drainage (AMD) dam (under construction) in the morning and report results of the prior day’s compaction tests as well as take several new tests.  Drive to the U.S. Steel Cumberland C Mine by early afternoon and pick up a list of locations for compaction tests on their 17-mile railroad construction project.  After completing those tests, drive back to Dogwood Lakes for a final set of compaction tests, and return to the ESB to weigh out moisture content samples.  And so that process continued roughly 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday for the entire summer.

For the first few weeks of that summer, we had to use a sand cone apparatus for in-place density testing.  When that first Troxler 2400 series nuclear densometer arrived, we thought we were in tall cotton!  What used to take about an hour to run in the field could now be done in about 10 minutes.  But wait!  It wasn’t quite that easy.  The gauge itself weighed about 45 pounds, not including the sledgehammer, base plate and drive rod.  In addition to the standard 4-minute calibration, you needed to take a 1-minute density reading and a 1-minute moisture reading and then do several calculations to determine the dry density and moisture content.  A moisture content sample was obtained and tested overnight to arrive at a final moisture and compaction results the next morning.  I know that compaction testing is genuine physical and mental work but trust me when I tell you that it’s much easier now than it was when the company started 50 years ago.

I continued working summers and school breaks until May 1978 when I finished graduate school.  Even then, I was assigned to monitor construction on a large slurry impoundment dam until the first stage was completed in late 1978.  I continued doing some smaller intermittent construction testing projects, as well as schedule QC personnel over the next 10 years until I moved to Winchester in 1988.  I firmly believe that the extensive field construction experience I received early in my career was invaluable in developing a practical and common-sense approach to solving geotechnical problems.  I still personally find it disturbing and concerning that many young engineers are involved in developing design and construction recommendations with very little, if any, exposure to real construction.

You can’t pass along any of the history of Triad without saying something about the significance of technology.  Imagine doing a slope stability analysis manually using a paper drawing, a scale, a protractor and a calculator.  Analysis of one slip surface used to take at least a few hours manually.  The same time commitment was required when manually conducting a seepage analysis, or flood routing for a dam design, or settlement analysis for a building.  In the early days, we were fortunate enough to have a teletype terminal which we would connect into a main frame computer via a phone cradle/modem.  This allowed us to run flood routing and stability analysis programs for many dam designs.  However, it would be many years before Triad would purchase its first personal computers and printers, and until that time, all formal proposals, letters, reports, etc. were prepared using an electric typewriter.  (Editorial note:  My mother was the secretary in the Morgantown office from 1978 until the early 1990s.  She was clocked at around 100 words per minute on an electric typewriter, but when she started using a word-processor, her speed increased to about 125 words per minute.  No more fear of mistakes!)

In the early years, drawings were all prepared using manual drafting tools, Leroy lettering sets, straightedges, etc.  Field surveying was conducted with levels and transits/theodolites, steel tapes, etc., because it would be years before Triad would acquire any electronic surveying equipment.  After many years and a lot of discussion, in consideration of potential business opportunities, Triad moved forward with acquiring CADD equipment, and production of deliverables became much more efficient.  Field surveying was then enhanced after we purchased our first electronic distance meters (EDMs).  It allowed us to increase our business for many mining clients and others who needed periodic updated surveys, and it enabled us to pursue other larger surveying contracts.  Although there have been many improvements over the past 30 years, those first few technological purchases were hugely instrumental in helping Triad move forward with expanding our expertise and services.

Looking back on 50 years, I’m convinced that working with a smaller firm helped my capabilities enormously.  The wide variety of geotechnical projects provided experience in several geographic regions, evaluating different geologic settings and dealing with varying clientele.  I’ve also had the opportunity to work in the laboratory, do field work on geotechnical investigations and construction projects, conduct detailed analysis and design for many types of projects, and manage personnel.  Shortly after I started with Triad, Onas Aliff, one of the principals, told me that they would give me increasing responsibility as soon as I was both interested in and capable of handling that responsibility.  That was certainly true during my career, and that’s the philosophy that I would like to see maintained at Triad in the future.  As an example, one has to look no further than Brad Reynolds who started as a young Staff Engineer in the early 1990s and climbed through the ranks to the CEO position.

My career would not have been the same without all the talented co-workers who helped me and the mentors who trained me over the years.  As you might suspect, I have seen dozens of people come and go from Triad.  Some of my closest co-workers were also friends because we had been through so much together.  Many people came to Triad and spent their remaining working years here because of the sense of family and commitment.  I think one of the best aspects of Triad is the ESOP which means that everyone is working for themselves and not just one or two individual owners.  Everyone is an owner, and everyone will benefit from the company doing well.