In 1991 Chris was working in Germany for a Redmond, WA based geotechnical company. He was transferred there to open and manage two new companies in Celle just south of Hamburg and in Claustal-Zellerfeld in the Harz Mountains.

When he left early in the year, we had a one year old son and a son just finishing his Junior year in High school. The plan was he would go, get things started, check out high schools and look for a place to live. I stayed behind while we put the house on the market and took care of organizing on this end.

Long story short, the company kept stalling on finalizing the move of our family and after a year of being apart the ultimatum was given ….. move my family here or… “or” won. So he said goodbye to folks in Germany and drove from Germany to London where he caught a flight home.

After successfully starting businesses for someone else in a foreign country, Chris decided to start a company for himself, be his own boss and in charge of his own destiny. His selling point to me was, “Worst case scenario, if it doesn’t work we’ll spend all our savings, and I’ll go out and get another job.”

With that SubTerra was incorporated on August 7, 1991 in our Redmond home. We chose our logo from an old photograph Chris had of the lighthouse at Beachy Head in England near where he grew up. Initially work came at a coal mine near Steamboat Springs, CO; at Yucca Mountain, NV with the nuclear waste disposal program; and abandoned mine reclamation and tunnel design work in WA state. SubTerra Engineering was started in the UK in 1992.

Josh and I travelled with him as he worked around the country, to Colorado, Nevada, Texas, Utah and overseas to the UK and Germany.  

In 1995, we purchased a brick house in Kirkland across from Lake Washington where we went through the permitting process and renovations to convert it to an office. We hired an engineer, a geologist and a receptionist. Work for them was closer to home around Washington permitting local gravel pits and mining operations. Chris continued to work all around the country and abroad.

In 1999 we became a dealer for Instantel, a Canadian company that manufactured and sold seismographs for blast monitoring and construction vibrations. We hired another engineer and a technician who worked in the field monitoring at local mines and construction sites. 

After several years in Kirkland we moved our offices out of Kirkland to a less crowded location. While we looked for a new permanent home we leased office space in the Preston Office Park just off I90 east of the city. By now we had two engineers, two geologist, two drafters and a receptionist/secretary. Joining this group was our old friend Howard Handewith who had retired from the Robbins Company. He worked part-time on tunnel projects in Singapore and on the Boston Outfall Tunnel project.

In 2000, just 9 years after incorporating we purchased a building in down town North Bend which became our permanent home. The building was built in 1950 and we spent 6 months renovating it and moved in permanently in March of 2001.

Since then North Bend has been our home base. Through all the up and downs of the past thirty-three years, we have seen blessings and trials, when the economy was slow just the right amount of work would walk through the door.  In 2009 Chris began pursuing his passion of helping to advance a tunnel/water conduit to revive the Dead Sea project, this lead to opening SubT Engineers in Israel in 2014. 

SubT Engineers has completed tunnel projects in Tel Aviv (Subway Redline), in Jerusalem (rock tunnels and blasting), and at other locations in Israel.  SubT Engineers is the Licensed Engineer for the KoHav Ha Yarden Pumped Storage project adjacent to the Kinneret / Sea of Galilee and are currently working at Israel’s first Pumped storage Project located at Maale Gilboa (the Heights of Gilboa). 

SubTerra, Inc. has now completed over 1,000 projects involving blast consulting, mining rock mechanics, shaft, tunnel and microtunnel design, geotechnical instrumentation, vibration monitoring and expert services for hundreds of clients.  We work for owners, contractors, large engineering companies and Federal, State and local municipalities.

Chris continues to travel for work across the US, Europe, UK, The Republic of Georgia, Israel, and Canada.  Chris and I have otherwise worked together in this adventure sitting about 20-ft apart for these 33 years.

He is well past the “normal” retirement age but continues his work.  He is tireless, positive, sharp and always looking ahead. In addition to his hard work ethic, he serves on the board for a local organization that seeks to aid those in need of assistance and housing.

So after 33 years, we are working with a smaller crew but still working on large projects with other companies. We may have spent all our savings to get started, but this dream Chris had of working for himself, being his own boss, resulted in a successful small business that has done many  great things around the world.