Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
Comments
“Frost heaves are my passion,” declares Stephen Cole, as he lifts the lid on a freezer the size of a small desk. Inside are several cylindrical containers filled with what looks like frozen dirt.
And that’s exactly what it is: frozen dirt. The half-dozen soil samples have been taken from various construction sites to determine how the ground will react to prolonged freezing. Cole points to one of them. “You can see that this one’s heaved quite a bit. But the one right beside it, which has been in here just as long, has hardly heaved at all. Based on the tests we do here, we can predict how much a piece of ground is going to expand over a period of time, depending on the composition of the soil.”
Cole’s company, S. W. Cole Engineering, has been digging in the dirt ever since he left Jordan Gorrill Associates, when that company closed its Bangor office. “My wife and I liked it here; we didn’t want to move to Portland,” he says. In May of 1979, Cole, who grew up in Guilford and graduated in 1972 from the University of Maine, Orono, with a degree in civil engineering, went into business for himself.
He’s never looked back. From its beginnings as “essentially me and a secretary,” S. W. Cole now employs 80 people with four offices in Maine and one in New Hampshire. “We’ve always stayed focused in the same areas—soils, geotechnical services, construction materials,” Cole says. “We’re always dealing with Mother Nature.”
Cole pronounces himself “semiretired” at the age of 59, but he’s held onto a kid’s enthusiasm for his work. “I decided I wanted to be an engineer at about age five,” he says. He describes various “fun” projects the company has undertaken over the years, from testing soil compaction beneath a stretch of the interstate in Portland to designing a temporary coffer dam to facilitate the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River. “How often do you get to design something to fail?” he says with a gleam in his eye.
Cole says he learned from a mentor at Jordan Gorrill the importance of community involvement. For Cole, this involvement has been both local and national, including serving for several years as president of the Associated Soil and Foundation Engineers, which sends representatives around the country for “peer review” of other engineering firms.
Ironically, one of his greatest achievements as his company’s CEO was devising his own exit strategy. “Beginning in the early ’90s, we developed a plan to transfer ownership to the next generation of people, and it’s worked very well. That doesn’t happen that often.” S. W. Cole Engineering still has 100% internal ownership, but with 23 owners. Stephen Cole owns a minority share, and works as a part-time consultant out of the firm’s Bangor headquarters. The lack of ego that allowed him to give up the reins of the company he founded also shows in his choice of office space: It’s in the basement.
The transition has given him more time to pursue his other passion: fishing. A registered Maine Guide, Cole leads trolling excursions on Moosehead Lake and fly-fishing trips on the West Branch of the Penobscot. But it’s easier to take the engineer out of the laboratory than it is to take the laboratory out of the engineer. Cole has lately been working with scientists from the University of Maine and Unity College to chemically tag smelt larvae in Moosehead Lake and track them all the way into the stomachs of lake trout, providing information about the health of the fish population.
“I’m into another science project that’s almost as fun as the frost,” he says.
And that’s exactly what it is: frozen dirt. The half-dozen soil samples have been taken from various construction sites to determine how the ground will react to prolonged freezing. Cole points to one of them. “You can see that this one’s heaved quite a bit. But the one right beside it, which has been in here just as long, has hardly heaved at all. Based on the tests we do here, we can predict how much a piece of ground is going to expand over a period of time, depending on the composition of the soil.”
Cole’s company, S. W. Cole Engineering, has been digging in the dirt ever since he left Jordan Gorrill Associates, when that company closed its Bangor office. “My wife and I liked it here; we didn’t want to move to Portland,” he says
Advertisement
He’s never looked back. From its beginnings as “essentially me and a secretary,” S. W. Cole now employs 80 people with four offices in Maine and one in New Hampshire. “We’ve always stayed focused in the same areas—soils, geotechnical services, construction materials,” Cole says. “We’re always dealing with Mother Nature.”
Cole pronounces himself “semiretired” at the age of 59, but he’s held onto a kid’s enthusiasm for his work. “I decided I wanted to be an engineer at about age five,” he says. He describes various “fun” projects the company has undertaken over the years, from testing soil compaction beneath a stretch of the interstate in Portland to designing a temporary coffer dam to facilitate the removal of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River. “How often do you get to design something to fail?” he says with a gleam in his eye.
Cole says he learned from a mentor at Jordan Gorrill the importance of community involvement. For Cole, this involvement has been both local and national, including serving for several years as president of the Associated Soil and Foundation Engineers, which sends representatives around the country for “peer review” of other engineering firms.
Ironically, one of his greatest achievements as his company’s CEO was devising his own exit strategy. “Beginning in the early ’90s, we developed a plan to transfer ownership to the next generation of people, and it’s worked very well. That doesn’t happen that often.” S. W. Cole Engineering still has 100% internal ownership, but with 23 owners. Stephen Cole owns a minority share, and works as a part-time consultant out of the firm’s Bangor headquarters. The lack of ego that allowed him to give up the reins of the company he founded also shows in his choice of office space: It’s in the basement.
The transition has given him more time to pursue his other passion: fishing. A registered Maine Guide, Cole leads trolling excursions on Moosehead Lake and fly-fishing trips on the West Branch of the Penobscot. But it’s easier to take the engineer out of the laboratory than it is to take the laboratory out of the engineer. Cole has lately been working with scientists from the University of Maine and Unity College to chemically tag smelt larvae in Moosehead Lake and track them all the way into the stomachs of lake trout, providing information about the health of the fish population.
“I’m into another science project that’s almost as fun as the frost,” he says.
Reader Comments: