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Jim Hartley's office is one of a series of similar-sized cubicles on the sixth floor of the River City Bank Building just off the Garden Highway. That it is the same size as all the other offices, that it has the same-sized desk and chair as all the others, is a little unexpected, because Hartley is vice president and the Sacramento-area manager of CH2M Hill.
In Sacramento, the global civil engineering company is now engaged in the Sacramento River Intake Construction Project. In Singapore it is designing and managing construction of the world's largest wastewater -treatment plant.
Jim Hartley is an important man in an important international company. So how come he works in a dinky office behind a dinky desk?
"That's the way the company wants it," Hartley laughs, "and that's the way I want it. One of our founders, Jim Howland, put together a little yellow book with some of his thoughts on how a company should be run. The second thought he set down was: Avoid position perks such as ... swivel thrones, and oversized offices. ... '"
The firm's name is derived from the surname initials of the founders of the company: Holly Cornell, James Howland, T. Burke Hayes, and Fred Merryfield. In 1971, the company merged with Clair A. Hill and associates to become CH2M Hill.
BACKGROUND
* Age: 44
* Education: B.S. in civil engineering, B.A., Italian, Stanford; M.Eng., geotechnical engineering, U.C. Berkeley
* Resident of: Fair Oaks
* Native of: San Bernardino
* Family: Wife Rose; daughter Sami, 12; son Nick, 9
THE COMPANY Worldwide offices: "We were founded in 1946 in the Pacific Northwest, and now we have offices worldwide, including more than 50 offices in the United States. We have about 12,000 employees worldwide, 1,100 in California. ... We're privately held. Some 75 percent of the employees in the company are tangible stockholders.
"Our work focuses on three primary areas, transportation, water, and energy and environment, which we link together. In those areas we can work on projects as diverse, for example, as the Sacramento River Intake Construction Project, which is going on currently, just north of Old Sacramento. We're the engineers and the construction manager for that project, which involves putting a pipeline under...