Business View Magazine | February 2019

210 its focus on large pipeline installations up to 48 inches in diameter, primarily utilizing auger bor- ing and slick boring for pipeline companies in the petrochemical market of the Gulf Coast region. In the late ‘80s, an inventor named Martin Cher- rington developed the concept of horizontal direc- tional drilling as a practical alternative to conven- tional trenching methods.HDD, as it would become known, ultimately revolutionized the way the con- struction industry came to install underground utili- ties and pipelines in cities and under large natural obstacles such as rivers.The Laney’s adopted the new technology and formed Laney Directional Drill- ing, running its operations from an office trailer in Laney Inc.’s backyard. “It fit the market that the Laneys were in,” recounts Maureen Carlin, the company’s Strategic Marketing Manager.“They already had established their pres- ence in the Houston area,which is the oil and gas capital of the country. So, they were able to take this HDD technology and apply it to smaller diameter over longer lengths and also some of the larger diameters needed by some of the oil and gas com- panies over larger lengths.” By the late ‘90s, the company was building its own custom rigs, some of which were the largest in the world at the time, and according to Carlin, still are.“We have a 1.8 million ton machine,which is the biggest in North America,” she states.“Around 2011,we started incorporating our engineering services and became a design/build company with our own in-house engineers. In 2014,we took over a technology called Direct Pipe,which is a form of micro-tunneling and added that to our services. It’s an up-and-coming technology that’s being used all over the world for very complex projects in areas that are environmentally sensitive.And since then, we’ve become a global leader in that technology for any large, complex,HDD project.”