By Russ Lawrence
Elliott Lander and his wife, Grace, found their way to the Bitterroot Valley via Triple Creek Ranch, where the Texas couple came for a break from their Houston-area business.
Then, they came back.
And again, repeatedly, until they realized that they had developed a connection with the valley. Eventually, they purchased a home here, and now Lander is opening a branch of his business, ATR, in downtown Hamilton.
Based in Spring, a Houston suburb, ATR provides “mission-critical procedure, work guidance, and knowledge management solutions to high risk industries.” Lander now has five people working in the former Job Service location at 333 W. Main, and expects to increase that number to eight by mid-January. The potential exists to more than triple that number, depending on efforts to grow the business, which currently boasts 52 employees in Texas.
The heart of the business is Lander’s proprietary “Smart Procedures” software system, aimed at providing training and procedures to improve worker safety, achieving operational excellence and zero incidents with software that humanizes the training and work environments.
Lander claims that ATR has more than 150 man-years of development invested in Smart Procedures, since its initial development in 1994. His educational background is in Chemical Engineering, but years of work as a consultant provided him with a business education, and a research collaboration with Texas A&M University provided insight into how humans interact with data.
The result is a product that is uniquely customizable, from font size to choice of device. Some clients may demand text-to-speech capabilities, others voice recognition. It is sensitive to context, so that in high-stress situations the vocabulary is simplified.
“It’s all research-based, not opinion,” Lander said, and is rooted in recognized “best practices.”
“We focus on highly-regulated, high-risk industries,” Lander explained, offering procedures that don’t just improve safety and training, but which contribute to a culture of safe and productive work. ATR’s clients are generally focused on energy production, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, but have also included such clients as NASA, and Deloitte, the international accounting and consulting firm.
ATR also worked extensively with the New York City Fire Department, to help them with the wave of hiring and training they faced after the Sept. 11, 2001 disaster.
Lander had been recruiting talent from around the country, but wondered about the viability of a Hamilton office. “I’m hiring guys all over,” he said, “why not hire in Hamilton?”
When he first approached John Schneeberger of the Ravalli County Economic Development Authority about the possibility of opening an office here, Schneeberger was thrilled.
“It sounded like quality economic development,” Schneeberger said. RCEDA is happy to work on projects that may only result in one or two quality jobs in the county, “but when we’re talking about 20, we get positively ecstatic,” Schneeberger observed.
The first thing that he and RCEDA Executive Director Julie Foster did was to convene a meeting with Lander, Victoria Clark of the Bitterroot College, and Maggie Wright Tickell, Employment Specialist with the Bitterroot Job Service.
“We all just fired away with ideas about how to make this work,” recalled Foster. Lander needed to be convinced that he would not have to trade off quality employees for location, Tickell said, and she went to work to prove it, as quickly as possible.
“My belief, and it’s been born out, is that we have an incredible well of talent here, we just needed the right opportunities. I believe it in my gut, but we had to prove it. We had an employer willing to pay really good wages, for really good talent,” she said. It was personally gratifying to Tickell when “we had a bunch of really good people show up,” she said.
After seeing the quality of his first round of applicants, Lander was convinced, but RCEDA and the Job Service have continued their commitment to helping launch the Hamilton office. RCEDA is working on a grant application from the Big Sky Trust Fund that could help with job development, relocation expenses, lease/building purchase expenses, and other related start-up costs. Likewise, they’re exploring Community Development Block Grant funding that could help with training and similar costs.
Lander has also been working with Hamilton Mayor Jerry Steele to lay the groundwork to receive those funds and to clear any administrative hurdles.
Meanwhile, the RCEDA has helped point Lander toward the resources he needed, including offering their own facilities for training. Tickell said that they’ve been able to help Lander with issues from finding a cleaning service to providing a basic orientation to Hamilton, and what’s important to the local workforce.
“It’s not just wages,” she observed. Workers of that caliber are interested in opportunity and growth, and ATR has a corporate history of capitalizing on the specific talents and interests of its employees. For example, their Spring facility was named one of the Houston Business Journal’s “Top 50 Places to Work” in Houston.
“He has a real desire to make a positive contribution to this area,” Tickell concluded.
Lander said he found local applicants with “great attitudes,” and decided not to wait on the Big Sky Trust Fund grant to begin his expansion. He’s currently advertising for “Application Programmer/Developer, and Software Support positions.
ATR’s website describes the business as “a rapidly growing company with the small company dynamic. . . we’re looking for the brightest, [most] innovative and talented individuals to complement our innovative technologies.”
“We’re looking to create a center of excellence here in Hamilton,” Lander said.
“Julie (Foster) has been doing a great job to welcome us,” he said, adding that Tickell has done “an exceptional job.”
For her part, Foster said “It’s exciting to see people working.”
Lander deliberately chose to locate in Hamilton’s downtown.
“We love the ambience downtown, being able to walk next door to a coffee shop. It resonated with us,” he said.
And now, it appears that downtown Hamilton will resonate with the energy of two dozen or more ATR employees, bringing new life to the district.