This month, Woodbourne Associates Ltd., Bermuda's largest multi-disciplinary professional firm, celebrates its 25th anniversary. Among the company's staff are civil, structural and building services engineers; quantity, building and land surveyors; project and property managers; and valuers.

Woodbourne Associates provides a range of consulting services for a wide variety of projects, and has consulted on almost all the major projects that have transformed the look of Bermuda in the past quarter century.

The company has been involved in the construction of many of the buildings that have gone up in and around Hamilton. Among the landmark buildings that the company has worked on in recent years are the side-by-side ACE Building and XL House; the Corporation of Hamilton's Bull's Head car park; the gymnasium at the Bermuda High School; the LOM Building; and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club breakwater and pier. The firm also prepared the budget for CedarBridge Academy.

Woodbourne Associates was founded in 1978 by an amalgamation of the practices of Geoffrey (Dickie) Bird and Miles Outerbridge. Both men remain with the company to this day in the role of directors and consultants. In his time, Mr. Bird was a Fleet Air Arm pilot, a Commodore of the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club and president of the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society. He was also a founder of the Marion to Bermuda sailing race. Mr. Outerbridge is chairman of Belco and president of Devonshire Industries.

Almost immediately after Woodbourne Associates was established, it began to play a part in the building of the modern Bermuda. Such was the firm's reach that when Hurricane Emily hit the Island in 1987, Woodbourne Associates landed 206 jobs as a result.

"After Hurricane Emily hit, a group of claims and insurance adjustors came in from the UK," director Mr. Paul Lowry recalled. "Emily then went on to the hit the UK, so they had to wrap up their work here and then fly home to carry on there, leaving us to handle many of the claims."

One of the latest projects on which Woodbourne Associates is consulting is the PXRE building on Pitts Bay Road, next door to the BF&M Building. The new building sits directly across the road from Woodbourne Associates' offices.

"There is hardly a building goes up in Bermuda that we are not involved in, one way or another," Mr. Lowry said. "If we're not involved in the design, we may be estimators for the general contractors or subcontractors."

Mr. Lowry, who is chairman of the National Trust's Property Committee and who serves on the Professional Surveyors' Registration Council, is particularly proud of the way in which Woodbourne Associates has helped many of the Island's small firms grow, to the point where they have been able to hire their own quantity surveyors.

"We've successfully trained two Bermudian quantity surveyors, both of whom are working in the local market, and are training a third," Mr. Lowry said.

By his side is a metal cart, which once housed the firm's only computer, the very first Apple sold in Bermuda. "Now there isn't a desk on which there is a computer - and sometimes as many as three," he said.

The phrase "back to the drawing board" is not much heard these days, since all the firm's work is computer-aided.

"With 17 professionally qualified staff, having 18 professional registrations in seven different disciplines, we must be the largest professional firm in the construction field," Mr. Lowry said. "We go from soup to nuts." Woodbourne Associates has a total of 26 staff, more than three-quarters of whom are Bermudian. The company's directors are: William Lang (President), Paul Lowry (executive vice-president), Richard J Mason, Jarek S Skreta, C Nicholas Kempe, and Ross Roberts, as well as founding directors Mr. Outerbridge and Mr. Bird.