Maybe it takes a Marathon Man to go the distance in the world of commerce.

Last week, a dedicated runner named Michael Crape, 38, marked his 10th anniversary as president of Calgary-based Crape Geomatics Corp.

It seemed an appropriate time for a backward glance. For starters, business is at a rolling boil on all burners. And forget everything you’ve heard about the loneliness of the long-distance runner.

Crape and his minority partner, Jim MacLeod, have plenty of company – 120 employees logging daily 10-hour shifts to keep up with oilpatch demand for Crape Geomatics’ field services and digital land mapping expertise.

Crape Geomatics may not be the most muscular Alberta player in its sector (that distinction belongs to Focus Surveys Ltd., with estimated annual sales of $40-million-plus), but the smaller firm’s revenues are impressive: $12 million to $17 million a year.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Digital land mapping expert Michael Crape started off working with borrowed equipment in a dingy downtown Calgary office.

To celebrate the first decade, as well as the vigorous corporate bottom line, Crape and his new bride, Michelle Hargreaves, have a date to run the Boston Marathon on April 21.

“You can never really explain how wonderful that feels. Incredible,” grinned Crape, who first qualified for the Kentucky Derby of distance races last year. He travelled to Boston and recorded a thoroughly respectable time of three hours, 25 minutes.

Perhaps that passion for fitness is a clue to the company’s fiscal health. As many as 40 of the 50-member office staff are serious amateur athletes. To maintain their edge, Crape hired a full-time physical trainer. There’s a gym in the building and, at Crape Geomatics, lunch hour runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., to accommodate midday workouts.

All things considered, life’s been good to a kid from Rossland, B.C., who, like Seinfeld’s George Costanza, dreamed of becoming an architect.

“I was sitting on a tractor in the field one day and my dad drove up and said: ‘Well, you can’t get into architecture but you can take a surveying course. They’ll let you into BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) next year,’” laughed Crape, who once skied alongside Olympic gold medallist Kerrin Lee-Gartner on a Rossland high school team.

After graduation, the youngster headed to Calgary, where the work was. He dabbled in seismic before earning his Alberta Land Surveyors commission and subsequently hooked up with various local outfits.

“But I thought I might do better on my own,” he remembered.

So, with a grand total of one (1) client’s name on his Rolodex, Crape went forth to conquer the world with borrowed equipment, working from a downtown office in the low-rent district ($250 a month).

But that initial contact carried him a long way. A production engineer for DeKalb Energy (subsequently acquired by Apache Canada Ltd.) asked Crape to survey three pipeline tie-ins near Taber, Whitecourt and Paddle River.

“That first job involved a tremendous amount of work. I went down to Taber in a rented truck,” he recalled.

Meanwhile, Crape contracted out the northern field jobs. He did all the drafting work in his dingy downtown office.

Somehow, he met the tight deadline. Clearly, the effort was appreciated. Apache Canada remains Crape Geomatics’ No. 1 customer to this day.

Naturally, the land-surveying business has embraced the digital age. Modular total stations – what one manufacturer calls a “survey power tool” – include everything from GPS to radios to survey controllers to office software and have turned the hand-held optical instruments known as a theodolites into museum pieces.

“Since Day 1, we’ve recorded all our information digitally,” explained the boss.

“Digital technology has created huge efficiencies in drafting. Everything is on screen – recording positions, angles and distances,” he said. But for all the gorgeous digital imaging and rapid data transmission, some things haven’t changed. Intrepid surveyors still travel to remote regions, where they brave bitter weather, muskeg and the occasional bruin.

“Our people work in areas where sour gas and H2S (hydrogen sulfide) are present. There are road hazards – our people put on up to 80,000 kilometres a year per vehicle,” he said.

So Crape, MacLeod and other senior managers perform frequent safety checks from Stettler to Brooks to Grand Cache, to ensure field workers take care of themselves.

Meanwhile, the company’s services are in hot demand.

“We’ve had to refuse work because we can’t guarantee an adequate turnaround on the product,” said the Marathon Man. Running on empty? Think again.