Little Yellow Book creator emphasized professional ethics, personal integrity

CH2M HILL co-founder James C. Howland, known for his consensus style of management and dedication to employees and community, died August 28, 2008, in Corvallis, Oregon. He was 92.

Mr. Howland served as CH2M’s general manager almost since its inception in 1946 until becoming president 20 years later after the firm incorporated—a position he held through 1974.

“I guess about every year I offered to (step down) . . . and every year they said, ‘Well, why don’t you do it for another year,’” he said in a 1984 oral history describing his long tenure at the helm.

“Jim wanted to be an engineer, but he knew we had to have a manager, so he managed,” said fellow CH2M co-founder Burke Hayes, who passed away in December 2007. “There are many contributions that everyone made, but the most important one Jim made was the one of management . . . .”

CH2M grew with virtually each passing year, opening offices throughout the northwest before merging with California-based Clair A. Hill and Associates in 1971.

The Oregon native helped calibrate the firm’s moral compass and has been described as the soul of CH2M HILL. He managed by consensus and recognized that sharing the wealth was good for employees, clients, and the firm.

“. . . if you kind of keep most everybody advised and you bring everybody into the decision making, and let everybody share rewards, why then you don’t have much of any management problems. They solve themselves,” Mr. Howland said in his oral history.

Mr. Howland was chairman of the board from 1974 to 1977. A year later, he published a pocket-sized booklet called Management Quotations from Chairman Jim, which later was renamed the Little Yellow Book because of its cover. It is CH2M  HILL’s cultural anchor and has been in print continuously for nearly 30 years. The little book, which today is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, and soon to be in Russian, provides brief messages on people, organization, ethics, and communication, such as this excerpt:

“Integrity is the all-important prerequisite to employment. The person must be honest with himself and others or we have no foundation on which to build.”

The book has been given to thousands of employees, and it is immortalized along the banks of the Willamette River in Corvallis, where quotations are on plaques at Howland Plaza. The plaza was built in 2003 and honors Jim and his wife Ruth “Meisy” Howland, who both volunteered tirelessly for their community.

“Jim Howland is one of those remarkable people who has enriched so many lives—in so many ways—that it becomes nearly impossible to keep track of all the good things he’s done,” said CH2M HILL chief executive Ralph Peterson.

Mr. Howland spent his youth enjoying the outdoors and Oregon’s powerful rivers and salmon-filled streams. It was in this setting, when he was in high school, that the notion of becoming an engineer sparked his interest.

“I seemed to get along all right in math and . . . science,” he had said. “I thought that engineering would take me outdoors a lot, and I liked the outdoors and I liked things to do with water.”

In the 1930s, at Oregon State College in Corvallis (now Oregon State University), Mr. Howland met his future partners—Hayes, Holly Cornell, and Professor Fred Merryfield. It’s where the first discussions took place about opening an engineering firm.

After receiving his bachelor’s in civil engineering and a Tau Beta Pi fellowship, Mr. Howland earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was in New England where he met his future wife.

Beginning in 1939, Mr. Howland worked for Standard Oil Company in California. Not long after the couple was married in 1941, he was sent to Hawaii to join an Army engineering unit. In the spring of 1944, Capt. Howland was deployed to Saipan where he was in charge of the planning effort to build the island’s military infrastructure, including hospitals, airfields, and water systems. He received the Legion of Merit for World War II Pacific Theater Service.

As the war was winding down, the four partners-to-be finalized plans to launch Cornell, Howland, Hayes, and Merryfield, a naming convention that was later shortened to CH2M and is based on the order in which the three former students returned from the war.

Following his retirement, Mr. Howland worked with CH2M HILL and the National League of Cities to fund an awards program for municipal enrichment, which recognizes communities that, through policies and planning, preserve and enrich the quality of life.

Mr. Howland was a supporter of OSU’s student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers for more than 60 years and regularly gave talks to the students. He received the university’s Distinguished Service Award and the Alumni Associations’ E.B. Lemon Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The American Society of Civil Engineers honored him with the John I. Parcel-Leif J. Sverdrup Engineering Management Award in 1984.

Mr. Howland is survived by his wife, Meisy; three sons, Mark, Peter, and Eric; daughter Joyce; and daughter-in-law Julie Shaull. He also is survived by five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

A memorial service for Mr. Howland will be held at Corvallis First Presbyterian Church at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9, with a reception at the CH2M HILL OSU Alumni Center from 3 - 5 p.m.