History

I moved to Atlanta to attend college at Georgia Tech as a Civil Engineering student. All I knew was that I liked being outside and I liked math. Civil engineering seemed the perfect field.

I was hired as a co-op student by UCG. I did field work consisting mainly of directing drill crews and classifying soil samples. I enjoyed it but I was never overly happy with the bosses. They did not seem to care if I was doing a good job or not. I remember my supervisor thanking me one time in the four years I worked there. That was because I didn't interrupt his softball game with a vehicle problem. To put it shortly, I felt underappreciated.

I left UCG and started at AEM. AEM was started by the owner of a drilling company that wanted to start a consulting firm. At the time I started, AEM had a project manager who was also the minority owner (15%), a secretary (the PM's wife), and a marketing guy. The drilling firm owner held 85% of the company stock but did not contribute to the work of the firm.

I began as a field technician. I collected samples (mainly at landfills and underground storage tank sites). After a brief time, I began writing the reports for the sampling jobs also. I should mention that I was still taking classes during most of this time.

I graduated college and began my full-time career with AEM. I don't remember all of the events that have taken place but over the years my responsibilities grew. I recieved ownership (5%). Around 2003 I made a concious decision to start running the company. It was easy to make the move since no one was really running the company and no one seemed to want the responsibility. The majority owner seemed only interested in seeing increased profit each year and the PM seemed happy to keep things on par. I went back and forth from being content that we were providing a salary for the current employees (a field tech and an additional project mananger) to wanting to make the company grow. I thought and heard all the quaint cliches such as "grow or die" and "grow smart". I was and am still not sure of the correct direction.