Stearns & Wheler keeps ecology in focus

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Dec 20, 2002 by Kropf, Annemarie

CAZENOVIA - In order to generate additional business for his firm, Steams & Wheler, LLC, President and Chief Exec ive Officer Gerald Hook formed a joint venture with his competitors. The result was Environmental Engineering Associates (EEA), a limited-liability partnership formed with O'Brien and Gere Engineers, and Blasland Bouck, and Lee in the mid-1990s.

"We're competitors, but we're also friends," Hook says. "Collectively, we're stronger than individually."

Over the years, EEA has worked on 13 projects. Currently, the company is involved with the cleanup of Onondaga Lake. EEA is working to upgrade the ammonia and phosphorus removal from the lake through its work with the Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Phosphorus is a limiting nutrient, Hook says, and kills algae on the water's surface, blocking the sunlight. This creates a lack of oxygen for fish in the water. The project should be complete in spring 2003. "It's been a very successful venture so far," Hook says of EEA.

Ecology is the focal point of all projects that Stearns & Wheler, LLC, an environmentalengineering firm, completes. "We don't consider ourselves clones of other engineering firms," Hook says. "We were primarily founded to service clients' needs in very sensitive environments." The company specializes in finding solutions to problems in water and wastewater treatment, solid-waste management, air pollution, infrastructure development, and improvement and informationmanagement systems.

Donald Stearns and Gordon Wheler founded the company in 1950. The two met at Syracuse University where Steams was a professor. He asked Wheler to assist him in some engineering projects, and the two then started the company in Steams's farmhouse in Cazenovia. Since that time, Steams & Wheler, LLC has completed more than 4,000 projects. At any one time, Hook notes, the company is working on 200 projects. Ninety percent of the projects are for municipal governments, while the remaining 10 percent comes from private or industrial clients, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Frito-Lay, and AnheuserBusch, Inc.

Hook came to work at an entry-level job for Steams & Wheler in 1976, after graduating from the University of North Carolina with a master's degree in water-resources engineering. He says that he chose to work for the company not only because he respected the owners, but also because of the prominence Steams & Wheler has in the community.

Steams & Wheler, LLC is the engineering arm, and original company, of the Stearns & Wheler Companies. S&W Services, Inc. and S&W Redevelopment, LLC are the other divisions of the business. "We do work together, but we are three legally distinct companies," Hook says. Each of the companies has a different board of directors, and a different president, but a common chairman of the board.

The engineering side designs projects for bid by contractors, and oversees the construction. S&W Services, Inc. offers environmental design/build, construction, operations, and maintenance services, while S&W Redevelopment focuses on property development in connection with the rehabilitation of environmentally contaminated sites. "All three firms specialize in the environmental aspects of client's business," Hook says. "We don't go out and build schools or railroad tracks."

Altogether, the three companies employ 225 people in 12 locations around the East Coast. Steams & Wheler, LLC alone employs 175 of these workers. In Central New York, 135 people work in the 33,000-square-foot corporate headquarters. Of these 135 people, 120 are in engineering, while 15 are in S&W Services. S&W Redevelopment has one location, a 10,000-square-foot office in downtown Syracuse, and employs 25 people.

"Our firm of 175 people competes with firms that have 3,000 to 5,000 employees," Hook says, adding that being firmly committed to environmental engineering helps the company gain clients. Approximately 100 registered professional engineers work at the company; of these, 27 are Diplomates of the American Academy of Environment Engineers. "Our firm has a high level of expertise," Hook notes. "We don't just give a routine solution to problems, but rather, the best approach."