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By David Yates

Anyone who has drunk clean water, driven on good roads or crossed a sturdy bridge in midwestern Ontario has benefited from the engineering work of B.M. Ross and Associates.  

For the last 75 years, B.M. Ross and Associates has been the “go-to” engineering company that has built and maintained the area’s municipal infrastructure. The smooth operation of these services that so many take for granted is testament to the firm’s skill and long experience working in the communities they serve.  

Burns McKay Ross, the company’s founder, was born in Oxford County in 1927. He grew up working on the family farm during the Great Depression. The value of diligence and hard work were instilled in Ross, who applied those lessons learned on the farm to his studies at the University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1950 with a bachelor of science degree in engineering and an Ontario Land Surveyors’ licence.  

He returned to his hometown of Woodstock and worked for a local engineering firm, but Ross was determined to be his own boss and looked to set up his own company. 

In May 1951, 24-year-old Burns Ross opened his firm’s first office in Malcolm Mathers’ Insurance building on West Street (now Lyons and Mulhern) in Goderich. Goderich seemed an odd place to set up an engineering company. Its proximity to Lake Huron meant Ross could expect no business to the west. He was also advised that a sparsely populated area like Huron County could hardly support an engineering business.  

Undeterred, Ross set up his office, introduced himself to the local councils and sat by the phone waiting for it to ring. One day, a lawyer whom Ross shared the office with told him to get out and go fishing. He would let Ross know if the phone rang.  

Sure enough, while Ross was fishing in the harbour, his first call was loudly announced when the lawyer drove down to the harbour honking the car’s horn. It was the first of thousands of calls to the B.M. Ross firm over the next seven-and-a-half decades.  

As calls eventually trickled into the office, Ross needed to hire staff. The cab stand next to the office and pool halls were fertile recruiting venues where Ross collared men looking for work. One longtime employee, Ray Young, recalled that while trying to earn a few bucks hustling at Woods’ Pool Hall, the manager told him that Ross needed a survey assistant. Young presented himself at Ross’s office and was promptly hired as the firm’s first permanent employee.  

In those early years, engineering jobs were scarce. It was the land surveying portion of the business that paid the bills. In the post-war years’ prosperity, Ross surveyed much of the land west of Highway 21 and divided it into lots along the lakeshore for family cottages. 

The 1950s was a time of unprecedented economic growth, which required modernizing the county’s roads, highways and bridges. Starting in the 1950s, small towns were required to install municipal sewage systems to eliminate reliance on septic tanks and outhouses. These were projects that only engineering companies like B.M. Ross were capable of performing. 

In 1960, Ross hired professional engineer Ken Dunn. Dunn had worked as a summer student for Ross in 1959, and recalled that when he was hired the firm “got really busy.”   

Using a slide rule, Dunn began “cranking out bridge designs.” Over the next 37 years, Dunn was responsible for designing more than 600 bridges and culverts in southern Ontario. He later served as the company’s president from 1989 to 1998.  

Shortly after Dunn’s arrival, the firm outgrew its original location and moved across the street to the Masonic Hall, sharing the building’s first floor with the Goderich Signal Star.  

As the firm grew, it was reorganized in 1965. With Ross as president, the B.M. Ross Survey and Engineering Company became B.M. Ross and Associates. In 1975, further expansion forced the firm to purchase the former North Street United Church manse and relocate its larger operation there.  

Another major change was selling off the land surveying part of the business to Christian Kiar. An Ontario land surveyor, Kiar, who had joined B.M. Ross in 1973, continued the land surveying part of the operation until his retirement more than 40 years later.  

The engineers designed the projects, but it was the field crews who went on site to take the notes that made the engineering projects possible. The survey crews were the ones who waded through rivers in December, cut lines in dense bush and swarms of black flies in the summer, and climbed down sanitary sewers to take measurements.   

Wayne Bauer, a highly respected survey crew chief, was hired by the firm in 1971. Fifty-five years later, Bauer still works the “odd job” for the company. He said he enjoyed the work because there “was a lot of variety; you were in a different spot every day,” and could use “your own know-how” to get a job done.  

Until the technological revolution, the field notes were taken back to the office where they were transcribed onto paper by a team of draftsman. Those plans were then submitted to the engineers who calculated how to bring the project to completion. Field notes can now be sent instantaneously to the office to be plotted by a computer.  

Bruce Potter, the senior engineer and company president from 2009 to 2019, was hired out of Queen’s University in 1974. He assists local municipalities in building and maintaining a reliable infrastructure system (water, sewage, roads and bridges).  

Potter said that in his 52 years with B.M. Ross and Associates, the company has always worked on behalf of small municipalities, the private sector and other government agencies. Yet, perhaps, the most important projects the firm has engineered are the water and sewage treatment plants that area municipalities in Ontario began constructing in the 1960s.  

Professional engineer Stephen Burns, who was full time in 1973, echoed Potter’s pride in the importance of constructing the water and sewage systems that now serve Blyth, Exeter, Brussels, Hensall, Zurich and Bayfield, to name a few area communities that have relied on B.M. Ross and Associates for safe drinking water and sanitary waste removal.  

After 53 years and serving as president from 1999 to 2009, Burns still works for the company. In a 2001 interview for the Signal Star, Burns said he was “proud to have been part of a business that has grown, that has contributed in a very positive way to the community.”  

Service longevity and company loyalty are due in large part to Ross’s concept of an employee-oriented workplace. At the time of his death in March 2008, founding president Burns Ross had ingrained in the company’s ethos an employee-focused work culture.  

Richard Anderson, who was hired as an engineer in 1984, said the company has “always been employee focused.” Deb Bauer, wife of Wayne, said the workplace is “the closest thing to family as can be.”  

Indeed, Ross’s son, Andy, has followed in his father’s footsteps and worked with the company from the late 1980s until his retirement in 2021. In 1987, Andy managed the newly opened Mount Forest office of B.M. Ross. He served as company president from 2019 to 2021. 

The company is also community oriented as it is one of the oldest private engineering firms left in the province, according to 27-year employee Darren Alexander. Alexander believes a good part of the firm’s success is that it deals with local municipalities.  

“We are approachable,” Alexander said, and “relate to the client base.” When a client calls, “they are likely to get a partner on the phone,” he said. “We have a great relationship.”  

Dale Erb, the current president, said the company now employs about 80 people working out of offices in Goderich, Kincardine, Mount Forest and Sarnia. As the firm has expanded and kept pace with the new technologies that have revolutionized civil engineering, B.M. Ross and Associates still lives up to its motto of “engineering better communities” 75 years later.