News

By Kevin Brockett, PS, PLS

            Triad Engineering’s services today include extensive capabilities in mapping and land surveying that provide clients with the high-quality geospatial information they require to make informed decisions and achieve project goals. These capabilities have continually evolved and adapted through decades of successful operations, but their origins can be found in the foresight and hard work of early managers and employees who were instrumental in developing Triad’s survey services.

One such formative figure is Harold “Chip” Chambers, who led Triad’s Morgantown surveying department during his twenty-seven-year tenure with Triad.

Originally from the Claysville area in southwestern Pennsylvania, Chip decided to study mining engineering after being convinced of the energy industry’s bright future in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis. However, mining in the region was at a nadir point in its historical boom-and-bust business cycle by the time he graduated from West Virginia University in 1981. Chip’s academic studies had provided him with the foundations for work as a land surveyor, so he found a job with a consulting surveying firm in Preston County, West Virginia.

After a few years with that surveying firm – where he gained experience in mine permitting, surveying, and environmental monitoring as well as other industry-related services – Chip was contacted by a former coworker who had gone to work for Triad in Morgantown. He suggested that Chip apply for a new position that had just opened. Two of Triad’s managing partners at the time, Onas Aliff and Dennis Chambers (no relation), had recognized a need to expand the firm’s client services portfolio to include surveying work, but they needed a skilled person who could develop those capacities and assist with clients’ mapping requirements. The managers quickly identified Chip as the person whom they wanted to fill the role, and he began life as a Triad employee in April of 1984.

Chip’s first year-and-a-half with Triad was largely spent as one-half of a survey crew, with the other half being whomever happened to be available to assist him on a given day. The initially sporadic survey work included mine permit preparation and field tasks such as boring locations, which related to Triad’s geotechnical engineering specialty.  Soon, though, the surveying pace accelerated as Triad secured major long-term contracts, beginning in 1986 with work related to the Anker Energy and Patriot Mining operations near Morgantown, and then in 1988 for power generation work at the Grant Town plant and the North Branch facility in the Mount Storm area. This increasing volume of work permitted the addition of new personnel. The Morgantown survey department under Chip would ultimately expand to employ up to four two-person survey crews on a full-time basis.

Mining industry clients would remain the principal source of survey work, but other markets were also capitalized upon wherever Triad saw an opportunity to serve. Abandoned mine lands reclamation provided numerous large mapping projects that kept the field crews busy with planimetric, topographic, and photogrammetric control tasks. At the other end of the spectrum, Triad accepted small boundary survey requests from private landowners, along with miscellaneous projects that happened to find their way down the pipeline.

Repeat business was common due to Triad’s reputation for quality work and the firm’s commitment to prompt responsiveness whenever a client presented an urgent request. Chip’s leadership in the survey department elicited clients’ appreciation for Triad’s rapid responses to emergent problems, such as when the collapse of a silo at the Morgantown power plant required continual structural movement monitoring to permit safe recovery operations. In another instance, the sudden collapse of cranes during bridge rehabilitation necessitated an immediate comprehensive survey for site documentation purposes.

The capacity for rapid response was of further benefit in non-emergency situations. A competitor’s failure to satisfy its client’s demand for real-time positioning capability resulted in Triad’s involvement with a major windfarm project on Backbone Mountain in Maryland, where a previous investment in expensive new GPS equipment permitted Triad to quickly provide the geospatial data needed for dynamic design adjustments in the field. In 1996, that GPS equipment facilitated a substantial award from the State of West Virginia for surveying and design work along a twelve-mile-long stretch of what would become Corridor H.

Progressive adoption of the latest geospatial measurement technologies characterized much of Chip’s time with Triad. Although electronic computation technology in the days before computer-aided design was limited to a manual-entry coordinate geometry program, and a steel tape was still the standard method for measuring distances when he first began working for the company, management’s acceptance of new tools consistently promoted improved efficiencies, as seen when the managing partners approved the acquisition of a Topcon 3B as Triad’s first electronic distance measurement unit. The EDM immediately demonstrated its superior value over the much more labor-intensive procedures of yore.

Benefits of new hardware were not limited merely to enhanced productivity, but extended into the realm of worker safety. Once reflectorless laser measurements became available, survey crews could obtain accurate data without personal risk at mine highwalls and in other formerly perilous circumstances.

Far beyond just the technical realm, Chip witnessed numerous innovations that impacted Triad’s ever-evolving operations. Changes to accounting practices meant that he had to dedicate more time to the minute details of individual project management, rather than simply ensuring the overall profitability of survey department operations. Despite the redirection of the manager’s focus, an advantage to the new system became apparent in the reduction of unpaid accounts-receivable invoices that resulted from improved contractual management.

Perhaps the most significant development at Triad occurred in 1996, after the managing partners decided to divest their ownership in the company through the creation of the employee stock ownership plan. Chip experienced the sometimes-uncomfortable bumps in the road that accompanied the transition, but he remained appreciative of the former owners’ decision to act in favor of employee governance as an alternative to simply selling the firm’s interests to another corporation.

Chip remained a Triad employee until 2012, when he decided that he was ready for new challenges after his children had grown up. He went to work as a mine engineer for one of Triad’s long-time clients, occasionally continuing to interact in a new capacity with some of his previous coworkers before retiring at the end of 2020 to enjoy time with his family and to finally get around to several home-improvement tasks on his to-do list.

When Chip kindly agreed to share his employment recollections for Triad’s upcoming fiftieth anniversary celebration, he stopped by to be interviewed at the Morgantown office in Mylan Park, which some might still consider to be “new” in comparison to Triad’s previous location on Hartman Run Road, where Chip worked for so many years. As a nice matter of symmetry, the current office is located in a subdivision that was developed on one of the sites of the former Anker Energy mining operations that gave the surveying department such a boost during Chip’s early days with Triad.

Looking back at his career, Chip feels that the greatest contributing factor to Triad’s longevity has been the emphasis on client service through responsiveness and high-quality work. His specific points of personal pride include his safety record and the varied interesting survey projects that he managed, but he most fondly recalls the people with whom he worked, especially the diligent individual surveyors on his team, some of whom can still be found on the active employee roster.

Perhaps it would not be unreasonable to conclude a retrospective summary of Triad’s surveying origins by observing that, in addition to the elements identified by Chip as crucial to the firm’s success, another indispensable component has been the dedication of capable hardworking employees like Chip Chambers. As Triad continues to forge a path into the future, it is fitting to honor their achievements as an inspiration to those who will follow.