Morrison-Maierle, Inc. Named SBA's Montana, Region VIII &
National First Runner-up Entrepreneurial Success Award Winner

HELENA, MT – Morrison-Maierle, Inc. has been named SBA’s 2009 Montana, Region VIII and National First Runner-up Entrepreneurial Success Award winner and will be honored at a luncheon in Missoula on June 5, 2009, along with a cast of other outstanding award winners. The Entrepreneurial Success Award is presented to a firm that started out as a small business and has grown into a large business, utilizing SBA assistance along the way.

Morrison Engineering Company got its start in the basement of John Morrison’s home in 1945, back when he worked as chief of design in the bridge department of the Montana Highway Department. A year later, Morrison teamed up with former co-worker and designer Joe Maierle and renamed the company Morrison-Maierle, Inc.

Consulting engineering was a little known profession in 1945, and starting such a business in Montana was not an easy undertaking. In the beginning, their sole focus was on helping Montana meet the challenges of post war public infrastructure improvements. With the business model of quality, integrity, and service, they helped communities build streets, water, sewer, drainage, and airport projects.

Throughout its business history, Morrison-Maierle has been a traditional, full-service civil engineering and survey firm built on its founders’ vision of service and principals of commitment, integrity, and communication. The company has steadily expanded its business areas and reputation by providing sound planning, design, investigation, construction engineering and surveying services to a broad range of public and private clients. Client bases include local governments, state agencies, federal agencies, foreign governments, private companies, individuals and Indian nations. A wide range of services are delivered to clients through specifically structured project teams drawing from professional practice areas including: transportation, structures, mechanical, electrical, water supply, wastewater, environmental, land development and surveying.

Today, the 64-year-old firm primarily serves the 17 western United States through 10 offices located in Helena, Billings, Bozeman, Great Falls, Kalispell, and Missoula, Montana; Gillette, Wyoming; Salt Lake City, Utah; Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. The firm’s success has been achieved primarily through internal, organic growth rather than acquisition. The success of each of its local offices, committed to serving local clients, has been the model for the company’s growth. For a period of approximately 25 years from 1973 to 1999, the company also served international clients providing basic infrastructure services for water, wastewater, road, and airport development, across 15 countries.

When the company obtained an SBA 504 loan through Montana Community Finance Corporation in Helena for construction of their 5,100 sq. ft. Bozeman office in 1992, they reported a total of 130 employees in the company. Today, between all ten of their locations, they own or occupy over 140,000 sq. ft. of space and employ close to 400 staff.

Not only has the firm grown in physical size, but they have also experienced monumental financial growth as well. Since 1992, revenues for the firm have surged 460%, while their net worth has grown by an astonishing 65%.

This Montana-based firm is consistently recognized by the Engineering News-Record as one of the “Top 500 Design Firms” in the United States. In 2008, Morrison-Maierle was also ranked as one of the nation’s “Top 25 Best Civil Engineering Firms to Work For” by CE News magazine and was identified as an industry leader in providing employees with an outstanding work environment.

Over its 64 years, Morrison-Maierle has weathered economic, business, financial and physical situations that threatened their operations. Always a private, internally held corporation, the firm has transitioned in leadership through seven presidents and three generations of ownership, and grown from a two-owner operation into a nationally renowned and highly successful employee-owned ESOP. Reflecting their recognition of its employees in the firm’s success, today it is jointly owned by a group of 82 internal common stockholders, in addition to the ESOP employee-owners which comprise 51% ownership.

Morrison-Maierle believes that to be a member of a community is to be involved in the community. The company and its community-minded employees give of their time to serve in organizations and on boards and committees in support of local activities throughout the communities where they work and reside.

Other 2009 Award Winners: Tim and Suzy O’Leary, The Kettlehouse Brewing Company, Missoula – Montana Small Business Persons of the Year; The Milky Whey, Inc. of Missoula – Montana and Region VIII Small Business Exporter of the Year and National Second Runner-up Small Business Exporter of the Year; Alpine Plumbing, Heating & Cooling, Billings – Family Owned Small Business of the Year; James Drummond, Stockman Bank, Bozeman – Financial Services Champion of the Year; Mike Leinen, Independence Bank, Poplar – Minority Small Business Champion of the Year; Tom Howard, Billings Business, Billings – Montana and Region VIII Small Business Journalist Champion of the Year; Prospera Business Network, Bozeman – Women in Business Champions of the Year; Shelley Lighter, SAL Design, Great Falls - Home-based Business Champion of the Year; and City of Sidney, MT – Small Business Community of the Year.

Linda Kindrick, Executive Director of Montana Community Finance Corporation in Helena nominated Morrison-Maierle, Inc. for this prestigious award.