The work, named and traced.

In 1994 I was running a small firm called Onsite Computer Specialists. Texas Energy Management was a small Dallas pipeline operation. Their CFO, Dave Palmer, had already cut a PO to CompUSA for a new computer. He asked me why he should buy from me instead. I told him, "When you buy a computer from me, you get me. When you buy from CompUSA, you get whoever is behind the counter that day." He bought from me. I lost a hundred dollars on the deal. My partner thought I was insane.

Dave moved to Star Natural Gas as CFO and brought me with him. Star was run by Dale Singleton, with Terry Klare as president. I met Randy Lentz there in 1997. Twenty-nine years later Randy is the EVP and COO of ONEOK and I am still embedded.

Dale became a mentor. Terry, who was Star's president and is still my client today at Monarch, taught me how midstream operations actually run. Later, when the network broadened into Cantera, I met Greg Sales and Judson Williams. Greg gave me a thirty-year working relationship that continues at Monarch. Jud taught me how M&A transitions actually work, a skill that has shaped every ownership change I have worked through since. I came in selling computers. I left thirty years later with a working understanding of how gathering systems, processing plants, and pipeline economics actually run. The technology was the entry. The relationship was the education.

Star grew the gathering system and then sold the assets to Cantera Natural Gas in the early 2000s. Cantera was backed by Metalmark Capital, a New York private equity firm that has anchored multiple midstream platforms over two decades. I supported the team through the consolidation. The old Lone Star Gas gathering system in North Texas. Expansion into the Grand Junction area in Colorado and Big Spring in Wyoming. The 2003 acquisition of CMS Field Services, a Tulsa-based gathering and processing operation Cantera bought from CMS Energy. When Cantera divested, the assets went in three directions. In late 2003 the North Texas gathering system, more than 2,000 miles of pipeline and five processing plants serving the Fort Worth Basin and the Barnett Shale, sold to Enbridge Energy Partners for $247 million. I worked the integration into Enbridge's operations under contract through the transition. In 2007 the Wyoming Powder River Basin gathering assets sold to Copano Energy for $675 million. Other assets transitioned to Penn Virginia. Randy went with Penn Virginia as an executive.

While the Cantera team was regrouping, Dale started a new company called CoStar. He brought me in from day one. He brought Dave Palmer back in as CFO. That was the last project Dave and I worked together. I took CoStar from formation to sale. Dale passed during that period. The company was sold. Dave retired.

Terry, Greg, and Jud regrouped and started a new platform. That platform became Monarch Natural Gas in Houston, also backed by Metalmark. Terry is president. Greg is CEO. Jud is CFO. I have been with them across every Monarch entity since: the Utah gathering system integration, the Mainesburg gathering system in Pennsylvania, Pro-Gas Services, Valor Fabrication, and the Monarch Oil Pipeline I was instrumental in standing up in the Texas Panhandle. The Monarch work is still active. I still support that SCADA today.

In 2010 Randy called me to a rented office above Weinberger's Deli on Main Street in Grapevine. He had taken his proceeds from a previous midstream sale and bought a gas plant. He needed a domain name, an email server, a phone line, and someone to figure out the technology that wasn't supposed to exist yet. I registered medallionmidstream.com that day. Thirteen years of build-out followed. Randy gave me the kind of seat most consultants never get: peer-level access to executive decisions, involvement in transactions, a request to participate in audits. I built a career on what I learned in that seat. Corporate IT, SCADA on AVEVA, cybersecurity across IT and OT, control room support, and the architecture that survived a hyper-converged failure during the GIP era. By the time of the first sale the pipeline ran more than 1,200 miles, moved approximately 850,000 barrels a day, and supported 150 to 500 users across 10 to 25 sites. Global Infrastructure Partners acquired Medallion for $1.825 billion in 2017. ONEOK acquired Medallion from GIP for $2.6 billion in October 2024. I was directly involved in the technology due diligence and integration planning for both transactions. I am still embedded post-acquisition.

Thirty years. Seven companies. Three private equity sponsors. Two billion-dollar transactions. The arc started because I told a CFO he was buying me, not a computer. He believed me. He brought me into a room of operators who taught me an industry. They are still in the room. So am I.

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The startup was Integra Hospital Management. Multi-state. Multiple facilities. They needed all of it. The network, the servers, the clinical systems, the EMR, the cabling in the walls, the helpdesk to support the people using it, and the compliance posture to satisfy HIPAA from the day the first patient walked through the door. We built it from scratch.

Hospitals don't get a soft launch. A pipeline can throttle back if the SCADA is shaky. A law firm can paper-shuffle if the email isn't reliable. A hospital opens, and the moment a patient is in the room, the technology has to work. The monitors have to read. The EMR has to load. The orders have to route. The billing has to bill. The chart has to be where the next clinician needs it. There is no graceful degradation in clinical care.

We started before the walls were finished. We designed the network in parallel with the building. We sized the infrastructure for the clinical load that was coming. We picked clinical systems with the operators, not for them. We trained the staff on the equipment before they used it on a patient. We stood up helpdesk operations across every state and every facility. We built the HIPAA posture into the architecture from the first cable, not as a compliance overlay after go-live.

The engagement scaled with the operation. More than six facilities across three states by the end. The technology held up. The compliance held up. The clinicians could do their work without fighting the system.

What we learned at Integra has shaped every regulated-industry engagement we have done since. The same principle that got us through that build applies in every operation where the stakes are real. Understand the business before you touch the technology. Then build the technology so that when the moment comes, it works.

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Law firms run on trust. The technology serves the work, and the work is built on confidentiality, accuracy, and timing. The principle is the same in courtrooms. Understand how the work actually happens before you recommend, build, or change anything technical.

We have supported law firms across three decades. Long engagements with Worsham Forsythe Wooldridge, which merged into Hunton & Williams in 2002. Hughes & Luce. Ayres Law Office, where we have now worked with two generations: founder R. Jack Ayres Jr. and his son Chris Ayres, both still active in federal litigation. Schneider Miller Reynolds, the boutique commercial litigation firm founded by Steve Schneider. Network, infrastructure, security, document management, and the work behind the work that lets attorneys focus on the matter and not the machine.

We have also supported the bench. Technology implementations across five Texas county courts. A collaboration with the American Board of Trial Advocates on courtroom technology in Dallas-area courthouses. That work has a different rhythm than law firm work. It is institutional, deliberate, and built for trial. When the jury is seated and the gavel falls, every piece of technology in the room has to work the first time.

The 2008 recession tested the practice. The same year a major client went bankrupt, our work with Ayres Law Office quadrupled in volume. Long-standing relationships absorbed the loss and kept us solvent. That is the durability that decades of legal-sector work produces.

What lasts in legal-sector work is trust earned across decades. That is what has kept us in these firms through merger, generational handoff, and trial cycles. We are still the technology partner they call.

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The work is forensic IT and OT analysis for litigation. Logs, systems, configurations, the technical record that tells a federal court what actually happened. We work alongside trial counsel under deadline, prepare for depositions, give direct testimony, sit for cross-examination, and respond to opposing experts.

We have been retained by two prestigious Dallas trial firms. Ayres Law Office retained us in a federal matter involving the City of Dallas. Schneider Miller Reynolds retained us in a federal matter involving Texas Instruments. Both engagements concluded with favorable outcomes for the parties we supported. Case details remain confidential.

Federal expert witness work is its own discipline. The deadlines are shorter, the stakes are sharper, and the technology under examination has often been built or maintained by someone whose work is now part of the dispute. The same operating principle still holds: understand what the operation was supposed to do before judging what the technology did.

Trial counsel engages us because we operate at the technology-operation boundary, not above it. We understand IT and OT environments because we have built them. Our testimony is informed by thirty years of being inside the systems we are now being asked to evaluate.

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