From a basement office in Potomac, Maryland, Bob Wormald started a home-building business in 1964 with his wife Myra. At first, the new company built one home at a time. Soon Bob developed and built small subdivisions throughout Montgomery County, Maryland, including Highland Stone, Lake Normandy Estates, Willowbrook, Willerburn South, Wynloch, Loch Haven, Ellenwood, and Manor Village.

Before long, all three Wormald sons joined the business, and the company grew to 85 employees, including a land development operation, a home building operation, a retail and office/commercial division, and a property management division. In 2005, Wormald was acclaimed the second-fastest-growing home builder in the U.S. by Builder magazine, due to its above-market-quality homes and focus on excellence in service.

Through the years, Wormald has always been a step (or two) ahead of the market. In the mid 1980s, long before "smart growth" or "neo-traditional communities" came into vogue, Wormald created the first Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) in the Mid-Atlantic region. Then we developed our own unique form of TND called TNC, for Town 'N' Country land plan design, blending town center formality at the core with country informality in surrounding neighborhoods.

Choosing to ignore the marketing consultants who said it wouldn't work and the zoning codes which said it wasn't possible, Wormald set out to achieve this vision by rewriting the city of Frederick's zoning laws, with the cooperation of the mayor and the city's planning department. Today, Worman's Mill is a thriving example of what smart growth can be, having received state, national, and even international acclaim.

The Wormald Design Team has created over 125 new home designs for condominiums, townhomes, villas, courtyard homes, and single family homes. Innovative land plans have included high-density single family courtyards, H-block townhouses with hidden garages, a French Country hamlet, and an equestrian village, as well as urban, transit-oriented, mixed-use designs. Wormald's leadership as smart growth pioneers has earned recognition from such prestigious organizations as the Urban Land Institute, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, the Metropolitan Builders Council, the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the National Association of Home Builders, and the State of Maryland Economic Growth, Resource Protection, and Planning Commission.

Wormald has also taken the lead in regional planning efforts and building code reform for the State of Maryland, pushing for performance-based codes and flexible compliance matrices focused on desired results rather than a system of rigid but not necessarily smart rules.