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The right chemistry -Energy Labs in Billings
After Lisa Bradley earned her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Indiana University, she returned to Bozeman to visit her family.
She was thinking her future lay with big labs like Eli Lilly & Co. or Dow Chemical, but a friend told she should apply with Energy Laboratories Inc. in Billings.
By JAN FALSTAD
of the Gazette Staff
Even though she had only packed casual clothes for her Christmas vacation, she set up an interview anyway with John Standish, vice president of Energy Labs.
"So, I came to the interview with John in a T-shirt and jeans," she said.
John didn’t have an opening, but liked Bradley and called her a few weeks later with a job offer.
"I couldn’t believe it. A chance to stay in Montana and work in my field," Bradley said.
Seven years later, Bradley is still sampling everything from well water to discharges from coal-bed methane fields. She is one of 60 Energy Labs employees in Billings, mostly chemists, who earn a good living at a sleeper company that avoids attention.
Since 1952, Energy Labs has grown from a company testing core samples from oil-and-gas fields to a multi-state operation. There are six offices in Billings and Helena, along with Casper and Gillette, Wyo., and Rapid City, S.D., and College Station, Texas.
In the 1970s, Energy Labs expanded from its oil-and-gas work to environmental testing. The relatively small Billings lab benefited from Congress passing key environmental laws including The Clean Water Act and The Safe Drinking Water Act.
"It was very important to our growth," said president Bill Brown. "Fortunately, we did branch out because in the early ’80s, we would have run into the oil bust."
A test for our times
Most Billings residents have never heard of the 50-year-old company, even though 75 percent of its work is regional.
Energy Labs does do anthrax or biomedical testing, but it is involved in projects familiar to most Montanans.
The company tests well water and soil samples for families and farmers and ranchers.
Energy Labs stays busy in Wyoming testing discharged coalbed methane water.
When a train derails, railroaders often call.
"If there is a fuel spill in a train wreck collision, we are almost certainly involved in it," Standish said.
Once the owner of a Chinese restaurant had the lab test plates imported from China to make sure they didn’t contain lead. Bradley said she had to put on her thinking cap for that one.
"The owner wanted to make sure they were safe. We tried to simulate Chinese food by using vinegar," she said. "The plates were safe."
Other projects include:
Testing water in Lame Deer for Coliform in 1999.
Testing home materials for asbestos.
Testing Coulson Park in Billings for possible soil and water contaminants from years of use as a city dump.
Employees also work as mentors for science projects, including one by high schoolers testing coalbed methane water.
Hometown leaders
When not working as a chemist/manager, Standish and his wife, Diane Standish, are long-distance runners and long-time members of the Yellowstone Rim Runners. John also raises miniature sheep.
Brown is active in education, recently serving as an officer on the Montana State University-Billings Board of Trustees.
In recent years, Brown and Standish have hired 80 percent of their employees from Montana State University-Billings or Rocky Mountain College, starting them at fairly low wages.
"We prove them the first year or year and a half," Standish said. "Then their compensation gets up there well above the average wage in Billings, Montana."
The company is one of a few in the country that recycles the solvents it uses in testing instead of incinerating them as hazardous wastes.
The two managers have earned their chemistry stripes the old-fashioned way.
Brown has a bachelor’s of arts degree in fish and wildlife management from Montana State University-Bozeman. Now he’s the organic chemistry guy.
His father bought the company in the 1970s. He returned to Billings to work in the firm after a stint in the Peace Corps.
Standish credits Brown with putting in the hard work to quadruple the companies’ employees to 160 in six cities since the late 1980s.
The company’s payroll sits at $5 million a year and the company shares profits with all employees, even the summer crew.
A Big Timber native, Standish earned a biology degree from the College of Great Falls. Now he specializes in inorganic chemistry.
Like many companies, Energy Labs’ growth is limited by finding employees willing to step up to management.
"What limits us is that competent management person being willing to take on responsibility to manage a lab," Brown said.
Homegrown jobs
Energy Labs has 2,500 clients and stays diversified.
"They all are important to us, but if one project falls through, that doesn’t hurt us at all," Standish said.
The company spends up to $500 a day with UPS in Billings shipping some 30 coolers of glass samples.
Bradley loads a sample into the Inductively Coupled Plasma/Mass Spectrometry machine to start another test.
"What’s fun is dealing with all the people, from trying to decide whether its OK for the farmer to give his livestock that well water, to deciding if what Stillwater Mining is doing works. I like the variety," Bradley said.
By working at Energy Labs, Bradley is continuing a family tradition of earning a living through science in Montana.
Her father, Eugene Hockett, was a professor of genetics at Montana State University-Bozeman. Her mother, Sharon Hockett, had a college degree and passed on her love of reading and writing.
"So, science wasn’t hard for me. It was fun," Bradley said. "In our house, girls could do anything and big things were expected."
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