a company built around people

Orion Planning + Design (OPD) didn’t start with a business plan, a corporate headquarters, or even the name we have today. It started in late 2010 with an email.

Graham Billingsley reached out to a group of planners he knew and respected with a simple idea: what if we worked together?

It was the middle of a tough economy, and the timing made sense, and the people made even more sense. The group had spent years working alongside one another through leadership roles in the American Planning Association and AICP. They knew each other’s work and they trusted each other. More importantly, they liked working together.

So in 2011, Carol A. Rhea, Joanne E. Garnett, Robert E. Blanchard, Cynthia L. Hoyle, Graham S. Billingsley, and Robert L. Barber made it official and formed Orion Planning Group (OPG).

A lot of experience.

The six founders brought nearly 150 years of combined planning experience to the table, much of it earned working directly inside state, regional, and local governments. Their résumés included two APA Presidents, two AICP presidents, multiple national board members, state chapter presidents, and decades of service to the planning profession.

But Orion wasn’t created to collect titles.

They shared a pretty simple philosophy: listen to people, work as a team, include voices that need to be heard, use good planning principles, and take personal responsibility for the work.

Those idea are something we still hold important.

We were remote before remote was a thing.

From the beginning, Orion did things a little differently. There was no big headquarters where everyone had to sit under the same roof. Instead, the founders worked from communities across the country, with offices in Colorado, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Wyoming.

That model gave Orion something important: perspective.

Our team could live in and understand very different parts of the country while still bringing the right people together for each project. Geography didn’t determine the team. The project did.

Turns out, that idea aged pretty well.

A lot has changed. The important stuff hasn’t.

Since 2011, Orion has completed more than 120 projects. We’ve worked with small towns and growing cities, counties and federal facilities, and communities from Hawaii to Georgia. Our work has even taken us internationally, including strategic planning and resource development in Peru. Along the way, that work has been recognized with numerous professional awards.

But the number of projects and the awards aren’t really the point.

The people are.

OPD is still built around the same idea that started with that email: find good people who are good at what they do, put them around the same table, and built trust together.

The names around the table have changed over the years. So have the projects, the places, and even the name on the door. But what makes Orion Orion has stayed remarkably consistent. At the end of the day, we aren't really in the business of making plans, writing codes, or designing landscapes.

We're in the business of helping shape the places you call home.