Veteran-owned Bemidji surveying company keeps growing

BEMIDJI, Minn. -- Inside an office room at Northwestern Surveying & Engineering, a wall is covered with taped up black and white maps.

The maps show the Enbridge Sandpiper pipeline projected route from North Dakota down through Park Rapids, Minn.,and beyond, a surveying project the company has worked on for the past year.

Tackling such a large project shows just how far Northwestern Surveying & Engineering has come since opening in 1997. The company is owned by John Peterson and Mike Stang.

Stang worked for Peterson before going to the University of Minnesota .

Peterson help Stang get a job in the Twin Cities with a company where Peterson had also worked.

"That's a funny story, because Mike and I were staking the Walmart...and he told me on the ride over there that he was going to go to the Cities to get his engineering degree. Well, while he was out setting the GPS, I called Jim Parker (at Advance Surveying) and before he got back to the car, he already had a job," Peterson said with a laugh.

"All I had to do was show up for the interview," Stang added.

But in 2007, amid the housing crash -- much of the work done by Advance Surveying was residential -- the work dried up in the Twin Cities and Stang was laid off. Stang landed a job with the Interstate 35W bridge rebuild, but the work was tough, and he and his wife had just had their third child, he said. His hours were from 3 a.m. to 8 p.m.

"I missed out on nine months," Stang said.

He took a couple of jobs in Canada, but all along he told Peterson he'd someday come back to Bemidji. So, in June of last year, he did just that. He bought into the company and now he and Peterson have the controlling interest in Northwestern Surveying & Engineering.

Growth and Pipelines

The company has always enjoyed a steady business, but they've kept a low profile, Peterson said.

When the business first started, they focused on construction project surveying, including for the new Bemidji High School, Home Depot and Walmart.

Then came some work on pipelines for Lakehead, now known as Enbridge.

"Once we had our own company, and things started to pick up in the pipeline business, then I really focused on that."

Peterson and Stang estimate 80 percent to 90 percent of their work now revolves around pipelines. "I'd consider us a pipeline surveying company at this point," Stang said.

But they are looking toward the future, too.

Peterson said he anticipates pipelines will remain the focus for the next five years or so, but they are planning ahead, hiring graduates with environmental science degrees.

"So, our focus is to broaden our services out, and add in environmental inspection and environmental consulting. And then build our laser scanning business," Peterson said.

Laser scanning quickly gathers information from thousands of data points over a large area - such as an office building or a bridge -- that allows surveyors, engineers and architects to quickly develop 2D and 3D models with very precise measurements.

"This laser scanning technology is going to be huge," Peterson said. "It hasn't really been embraced too much here by the architects, because they're afraid of having to buy new software and it's a new technology. But we are getting in on the ground floor on it. That is the direction our business is going."

Keeping it local

Northwestern Surveying & Engineering has five Bemidji State University graduates on staff, and they are looking to add another soon.

"Which is nice because we are drawing these guys back to Bemidji," Stang said. "So it's really nice to see these technical jobs coming back to Bemidji."

"That's one of the things we want to do. We've been a big supporter of Beaver Pride over the years, and as we get more of these young guys, that will be the future of our business.," Peterson said. "They're here, buying houses now."

When he left for the Twin Cities in the late 90s, Stang said he noticed others were leaving, too. "It almost seems opposite now. Which is good, it seems like Bemidji is moving in the right direction," Stang said.

Northwestern has 16 employees but works with a subcontractor, Northwoods Surveying, which uses five additional employees.

Perfect for pipelines

Northwestern Surveying's knowledge of the area was a big asset in landing the Enbridge Sandpiper project. And they knew they could build the right team to meet the company's deadlines.

"That was our leg up, versus a lot bigger companies that just hadn't been surveying in northern Minnesota for 30 years like the people we knew had been. And that's the difference. And we've done a good job for Enbridge," Peterson said.

Another thing they do for Enbridge is provide services to maintain the integrity of pipelines. "What Enbridge has done here is they decided to spend the money it's going to take to run tools through the lines. And they're finding every anomaly in the lines, if there's corrosion or dents and cracks. And they're spending billions on this maintenance program. What we do is have crews that go out and mark the approved access in, mark all the pipelines...basically they do what we call a four-ways sweep," Peterson said.

Northwestern then makes maps showing the layout. It's become a big part of the business.

"And we have two crews full time on that and one crew part time. And things change a lot, and they work awful hard. We've sent our people to locating courses and taken online courses. We take it pretty seriously," Peterson said.