Our Story
Lanier & Associates was formed in 1974 and, at that time, was a one person firm. That person was Sorrell Lanier, the founder of our company. Sorrell was a professional engineer and registered land surveyor who began his career designing and then constructing large marine structures for Texaco. From the beginning, Sorrell consistently highlighted our firm’s need to “always provide the highest level of service to every client”. That goal applies to both technical expertise and outstanding client services.
During the first few years our company focused mostly on marine civil/structural projects; but, soon, in response to the needs of our clients, both mechanical engineering and electrical engineering capabilities were added to enable us to provide all encompassing, multi-disciplined solutions for our clients’ industrial projects. Shortly thereafter we added construction management services along with complete topographic and hydrographic surveying capabilities. These field services provide efficient, practical and common sense construction inputs to our overall engineering process.
For more than 40 years Lanier has provided full service, highly integrated, multi-disciplined services to the industrial community. During that period we have grown from a one-person firm to a staff of about 100.
Our corporate philosophy from 40 years ago is exactly the same as it is today – we can best serve our clients by bringing the most talented people into our company and then, by doing whatever is necessary, have them remain a part of our company for their entire career.
Our philosophy has long term staff retention at its core and this enables us to consistently provide to our clients a very predictable, highly skilled and virtually unchanging array of very talented people who have long ago become familiar with and are personally committed to addressing the unique needs and sensitivities of each client. Our philosophy stands in stark contrast to the recent industry trend which unfortunately promotes the “quick to hire & quick to fire” staffing concept which routinely fails to adequate address the needs of industrial clients. The success of our company proves that our clients understand and benefit from the accountability, continuity and long standing relationships that our corporate philosophy guarantees.
Our dual focus on fostering technical expertise and providing outstanding client services was firmly established by Sorrell over 40 years ago. That focus has been carefully coupled with our mission to retain and support the finest technical group that can be assembled in order to build Lanier & Associates into the unique and extremely capable engineering firm that we are today.
We thank both Sorrell Lanier and our loyal clients and we appreciate their continued support and encouragement which clearly made our success possible.
