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By Andrea Dace

When you look at a company like Hornor Brothers Engineers (HBE), with over a century of civil, mining, and environmental consulting projects on its books, you can see how completely the profession of engineering transformed the 20th century. You even get a sense of how the profession, aided by computers and electronic instrumentation, made the transition into the 21st. The story of this engineering firm also serves as an extraordinary example of an enduring American business model ­ the family-owned business.

Brothers Carl and Paul S. Hornor founded HBE in 1902 in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and since then, four generations of Hornor fathers and sons, all professional engineers, have owned and operated the company. Paul A. Hornor, III -- known as Trey -- currently heads HBE, while Trey's father, Paul A. Hornor, Jr., who took over from his father and ran the company from 1984 to 2001, still works at HBE and handles marketing for the firm. Trey's brother, John W. Hornor, runs the company's legacy surveying department.

When HBE celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2002, Trey and his family put together a presentation of company history, drawing from great-grandfather Paul S. Hornor's memoirs published in 1953. Paul S. writes of how, as a young man, he learned the land surveying profession with a compass and two-pole chain. Later, as the rod man on a surveying crew at the turn of the century, he remembers walking the hills, from county to county, carrying the crew's 24-pound theodolite instrument. To complete the display, Trey describes the difficulty in selecting only five or six historic maps and drawings from the company's archive of about 30,000.

As one would expect in West Virginia, brothers Carl and Paul S. got their start as contract surveyors with coal mining companies. In HBE's first 50 years, a large part of the business came from conducting underground surveys in mines. In those years, the HBE surveyors went down the shaft after the miners to map headings, the corridors that miners drill or cut into the coal seam. HBE would determine how far the miners had drilled and whether they were moving in the right direction. When the mine was complete, the mining company had an accurate map of the coal and the layout of the mine. "It was hard work," says Trey. Many coal seams were shallow, some only 30 inches high. "You can imagine surveying such a space," he says. HBE's surveyors would have to crawl through these low headings carrying lights and a transit on a very short tripod.

In a unique twist, in the 1970s, the West Virginia Department of Highways hired HBE to appraise the property it was buying for what would become Interstate 79. Because that land in the Clarksburg/Harrison area included coal property, HBE revisited some of the same underground survey work it did in the 1920s and 1930s. The appraisal of the I-79 right-of-way had to include mine surveys because the property owner had to be compensated not only for the surface land but the mineral rights of the ground underneath, too.

This sheds light on how the founding brothers and their company's engineering projects cover the arc of the progress of transportation in the modern age. Carl and Paul S. laid out and designed a number of the county's original railways, railroad sidings, and spurs. In the 1930s, the company got involved in the design of the first airport in the Clarksburg/Harrison area. Initially, there was only one runway about a half a mile long. Over the next 65 years, HBE continued to win engineering contracts for work on the airport, and they completed a $31.5 million extension in 1999. Today, the Harrison-Marion Regional Airport comprises a large commercial enterprise and includes a new aerospace training center, another recent HBE project.

In the 1940s, HBE became involved in the design and stakeout of most of the area's residential subdivisions and local municipal water systems. The population of north-central West Virginia, which had grown since the 1930s, would peak in the 1950s. During those years, most people were employed in coal mining, and supplying the demand for coal during WWII brought many jobs. While much of HBE's work during those years came in response to the growing economy, many of the company's design projects allowed smaller rural towns in the area to modernize. For example, towns started to hire HBE to extend the public water supply and other service systems to more remote residents. HBE continued to build its municipal business; in the early 1960s, HBE designed approximately ten miles of city streets for Clarksburg.

To this day, general property and residential surveying and water plant design continue to demand much of HBE's attention, as the mining and manufacturing job base in Clarksburg has dwindled. Although West Virginia still ranks as one of the top three coal producing states in the U.S., mining employs relatively few people because much of the process has become automated. Clarksburg now has several large utilities and hospitals, and these generate many of HBE's projects today.
All told, about two-thirds of HBE's business comes from rural water projects and the rest from residential developments, commercial sites, and street beautification projects for older downtowns in nearby cities.

When asked how he thinks HBE has lasted all these years, Trey responds, "Continuity. Our company has been handed down through four generations of Hornors. The overlapping of one generation to another, the passing along of not only engineering principles and practices, but also general business practices, has been important." He says this continuity has created goodwill in the community as well as repeat business. "We are well known in the area. People have confidence of what we can do."

Commenting on the generational span of some of HBE's projects, Trey says, "I've noticed there's a lot more paper work." Comparing of those earlier projects -- whether road design, design of an airport facility, or the airport itself, he says "there was far less regulation, fewer permits and approvals required by state or federal agencies, and fewer design guidelines." As with the entire engineering profession, another major change in HBE's business has been its use of computers. "When I came here in 1985, we were still doing all our drawings with paper and pencil. That was pretty much standard for the entire industry." After college and a few years of living abroad and working for a large global engineering company, Trey says when he joined the company, one contribution he made was to invest in a computerized plotting and drafting system.

You can't resist asking Trey if he thought his great-grandfather would be surprised that the firm was still in business. Trey replies, "If he walked in here today, he would see it pretty much as it was in his time." The historic HBE building on Main and Third streets, where the company has its offices, remains much the same as in Trey's great-grandfather's day. But Trey adds, "I think he would be amazed at the computer-aided drafting and design and impressed with the quality drawings as they come off the plotter. That would be the biggest shock."

Concerning the company's hiring situation, HBE currently has 15 employees, and because of its small size, it doesn't frequently hire new engineers. Also, turnover is very low, as employees stay an average of 30 years. However, Trey says he accepts resumes anyway because they always take an interest in qualified people. "If a particular person becomes available, I'll find work for them to do."

Andrea Dace is a freelance writer in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Company: Hornor Brothers Engineers

Type: Consulting engineering firm

Location: Clarksburg, West Virginia

Services: Civil engineering, including surveying and design of rural water systems, residential and commercial development, and streetscapes

Contact for submitting resumes: Trey Hornor, 304-624-6445, company e-mail: HBE1902@aol.com, company mailing address: P.O. Box 386, Clarksburg, WV 26302

Website: www.HornorBrosEng.com

Progressive Engineer
Editor: Tom Gibson
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