Our foundation
We are proud of our history, from our launch in 1955 to our broadening scope of capabilities and geographic reach in the 21st century. The company was established in Nashville by Dan Barge, Jr., William Waggoner, and Billy Sumner, three classmates at Vanderbilt University (Bill Cannon, who started with the firm in 1955, was added to the firm leadership in 1972, giving the firm its present name).
In 2005, as a way to mine some of the stories embedded in the firm's rich history, business historian Bill Carey was hired to write a history of our first 50 years. His book, The Way They Wanted It, A History of Barge Waggoner Sumner & Cannon, captures the story of how three men started a small engineering firm; how they kept it alive despite unforeseen challenges; how they got along; how they changed their business plan along the way because of changes in the marketplace and new laws; and how they changed the landscape and built environment everywhere the firm worked. This excerpt was published in 2005 to announce the book’s publication.
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