A/R/C ASSOCIATES, INC. KLOHN CRIPPEN BERGER LTD. AEI ENGINEERING, LLC LOONEY RICKS KISS ALBECKGERKEN, INC. MKSK ALTAMONT ENVIRONMENTAL, INC. MOORE ENGINEERING, INC. AMERICAN ENGINEERS, INC. NCE ARROW ENGINEERING INC. P2S ENGINEERING, INC. BARKER RINKER SEACAT ARCHITECTURE PAPE-DAWSON ENGINEERS, INC. BROOK ARCHITECTURE, INC. PARETTESOMJEN ARCHITECTS, LLC BROWN ENGINEERS, LLC PES STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS, INC. BWBR PHILLIPS ARCHITECTURE, PA CARPENTER MARTY TRANSPORTATION PRAXIS3 CORE STATES GROUP PREIN&NEWHOF DGR ENGINEERING READY ENGINEERING CORPORATION FARNSWORTH GROUP, INC. ROBERT PECCIA & ASSOCIATES, INC. GDA ENGINEERS ROBINSON CONSULTANTS INC. GEOSYNTEC CONSULTANTS, INC. RODGERS CONSULTING, INC. GLAVÉ& HOLMES ARCHITECTURE ROWLAND+BROUGHTON ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN GLOTMAN.SIMPSON CONSULTING ENGINEERS RTM ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS GREAT WEST ENGINEERING, INC. SCHMIDT DESIGN GROUP, INC.HARRIS CONSULTING ENGINEERS, LLC SEAMON WHITESIDE HART & HICKMAN, PC SPEC SERVICES, INC. HMB PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS, INC. SPURLOCK POIRIER LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS HVJ ASSOCIATES, INC. TULLOCH ENGINEERING INSITE ENGINEERING, LLC VALCOUSTICS CANADA LTD. JANSEN STRAWN CONSULTING ENGINEERS VERTICAL ARTS INC. JLG ARCHITECTS WADE TRIM JONES & DEMILLE ENGINEERING INC. WEBER THOMPSON KIMLEY-HORN WILLIAMS BLACKSTOCK ARCHITECTS, PC KL&A, INC. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS WKMC ARCHITECTS, INC.ARROW ENGINEERING INC. P2S ENGINEERING, INC. BARKER RINKER SEACAT ARCHITECTURE PAPE-DAWSON ENGINEERS, INC. BROOK ARCHITECTURE, INC. PARETTESOMJEN ARCHITECTS, LLC BROWN ENGINEERS, LLC PES STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS, INC. BWBR PHILLIPS ARCHITECTURE, PA CARPENTER MARTY TRANSPORTATION PRAXIS3 CORE STATES GROUP PREIN&NEWHOF DGR ENGINEERING READY ENGINEERING CORPORATION FARNSWORTH GROUP, INC. ROBERT PECCIA & ASSOCIATES, INC. GDA ENGINEERS ROBINSON CONSULTANTS INC. GEOSYNTEC CONSULTANTS, INC. RODGERS CONSULTING, INC. GLAVÉ& HOLMES ARCHITECTURE ROWLAND+BROUGHTON ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN GLOTMAN.SIMPSON CONSULTING ENGINEERS RTM ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS GREAT WEST ENGINEERING, INC. SCHMIDT DESIGN GROUP, INC.HARRIS CONSULTING ENGINEERS, LLC SEAMON WHITESIDE HART & HICKMAN, PC SPEC SERVICES, INC. HMB PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS, INC. SPURLOCK POIRIER LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS HVJ ASSOCIATES, INC. TULLOCH ENGINEERING INSITE ENGINEERING, LLC VALCOUSTICS CANADA LTD. JANSEN STRAWN CONSULTING ENGINEERS VERTICAL ARTS INC. JLG ARCHITECTS WADE TRIM JONES & DEMILLE ENGINEERING INC. WEBER THOMPSON KIMLEY-HORN WILLIAMS BLACKSTOCK ARCHITECTS, PC KL&A, INC. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS WKMC ARCHITECTS, INC. ARROW ENGINEERING INC. P2S ENGINEERING, INC. BARKER RINKER SEACAT ARCHITECTURE PAPE-DAWSON ENGINEERS, INC. BROOK ARCHITECTURE, INC. PARETTESOMJEN ARCHITECTS, LLC BROWN ENGINEERS, LLC PES STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS, INC. BWBR PHILLIPS ARCHITECTURE, PA CARPENTER MARTY TRANSPORTATION PRAXIS3 CORE STATES GROUP PREIN&NEWHOF DGR ENGINEERING READY ENGINEERING CORPORATION FARNSWORTH GROUP, INC. ROBERT PECCIA & ASSOCIATES, INC. GDA ENGINEERS ROBINSON CONSULTANTS INC. GEOSYNTEC CONSULTANTS, INC. RODGERS CONSULTING, INC. GLAVÉ& HOLMES ARCHITECTURE ROWLAND+BROUGHTON ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN GLOTMAN.SIMPSON CONSULTING ENGINEERS RTM ENGINEERING CONSULTANTS GREAT WEST ENGINEERING, INC. SCHMIDT DESIGN GROUP, INC.HARRIS CONSULTING ENGINEERS, LLC SEAMON WHITESIDE HART & HICKMAN, PC SPEC SERVICES, INC. HMB PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS, INC. SPURLOCK POIRIER LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS HVJ ASSOCIATES, INC. TULLOCH ENGINEERING INSITE ENGINEERING, LLC VALCOUSTICS CANADA LTD. JANSEN STRAWN CONSULTING ENGINEERS VERTICAL ARTS INC. JLG ARCHITECTS WADE TRIM JONES & DEMILLE ENGINEERING INC. WEBER THOMPSON KIMLEY-HORN WILLIAMS BLACKSTOCK ARCHITECTS, PC KL&A, INC. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS WKMC ARCHITECTS, INC.ARROW ENGINEERING INC. P2S ENGINEERING, INC. BARKER RINKER SEACAT ARCHITECTURE PAPE-DAWSON ENGINEERS, INC. BROOK ARCHITECTURE, INC. PARETTESOMJEN ARCHITECTS, LLC BROWN ENGINEERS, LLC PES STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS, INC. BWBR PHILLIPS ARCHITECTURE, PA CARPENTER MARTY TRANSPORTATION PRAXIS3

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HERE’S HOW THEY DID IT!

2015CIRCLE OF

EXCELLENCE

BECOMING PART OF PSMJ’S CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE

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DON’T MISS YOUR CHANCE TO COME FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE FUTURE OF THE A/E/C BUSINESS!

Where do you get that next great idea?

That new strategy to bring your architecture or engineering firm to the next level? PSMJ’s A/E/C Industry Summit brings together some of the brightest minds and the most successful firms in our industry to share experiences, to examine where future opportunities lie, and to articulate a clear picture what sustainable growth looks like.

With exclusive access to our industry’s most successful, forward-thinking leaders and their best advice for not just surviving, but thriving, in today’s global economy, you will get the proven insight you need to run your firm with new-found confidence and vigor. More than just best practices…you can get those anywhere. At PSMJ’s A/E/C Industry Summit, you get to hear directly from the firm leaders who have broken away from the pack and have found outstanding success

Here, in this e-book, we’ve compiled interviews and roundtable conversations with some of this year’s star performers in the A/E/C industry—PSMJ’s 2015 Circle of Excellence winners—all of whom will be honored at PSMJ’s A/E/C Industry Summit in San Francisco on December 3-4, 2015.

We’ve asked these top performers to share the best practices and lessons learned that have helped pave their road to financial success, all to help give you an idea—a sneak peek, if you will—of what you have to look forward to in December. We hope you find this e-book informative, and that you walk away with a few good tips.

Most of all, we hope it makes you eager for the extraordinary content we have planned for you in December—SEE YOU THEN IN SAN FRANCISCO!

2015A/E/C

INDUSTRY SUMMIT

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TABLE OF CONTENTSPART ONE: WHAT IS PSMJ’S CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE?Reasons to Celebrate: A/E Industry’s Top Performing FirmsBenchmarking Your A/E Firm to Financial Growth

PART TWO: THE ROAD TO SUCCESS FOR A FIRST-TIME CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE MEMBER JLG ARCHITECTSGetting to Where We’re Growing, One Baby Step at a TimeBack to Basics to Attract Top Talent

PART THREE: THE TOP SECRETS OF RECURRING CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE MEMBERSIntroducing our Circle of Excellence Roundtable PanelQ&A: The Good, Bad & Ugly of Strategic Planning Keeping Your Customers Close (and Loyal)Getting Creative: Tips to Hiring and Retaining the Best

Copyright ©2015 by PSMJ Resources, Inc.®

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

PSMJ Resources Inc.’s material is protected by copyright. It is illegal under Federal law to make copies or faxes of the publication without permission—even for internal use. Violators risk criminal penalties and damages up to $100,000 per offense.

PSMJ Resources, Inc. will pay a reward of up to $1,000 for actionable evidence of illegal copying or faxing.

PSMJ Resources, Inc.®P.O. Box 95190Nonantum, MA 02495Phone: 617-965-0055Fax: 617-965-5152Email: customerservice@psmj.comwww.psmj.com

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PART ONE: WHAT IS PSMJ’S CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE?Reasons to Celebrate: A/E Industry’s Top Performing Firms

All of us in the A/E/C industry have certainly begun to revel in the economic recovery and steady growth in recent years. There are, however, firms that continue to raise the bar on what it means to be successful.

PSMJ’s Circle of Excellence is designed to highlight firms that are successfully managed and demonstrate outstanding achievements in profitability, overhead management, cash flow, productivity, business development, staff growth, and turnover (based on 13 key performance metrics).

The Circle of Excellence represents the top 20% of participants in PSMJ’s annual A/E Financial Performance Benchmark Survey. Sixty-six exceptional firms made it onto the exclusive list this year.

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“Year after year, the diversity of these firms continues to prove that success isn’t necessarily defined by the size of a firm, their practice area, geographic location, or even the markets they serve, but instead by a strong commitment to solid business practices,” says Kate Allen, P.E., Director of PSMJ’s A/E/C Industry Surveys. “Our passion may be our practice, but top-notch business practices are critical for sustainability.”

PSMJ Resources, Inc. announced the following firms as members of the 2015 Circle of Excellence (listed in alphabetical order):

A/R/C Associates, Inc. AEI Engineering, LLC Albeck Gerken, Inc. Altamont Environmental, Inc. American Engineers, Inc. Arrow Engineering Inc. Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture Brook Architecture, Inc. Brown Engineers, LLC BWBR Carpenter Marty Transportation

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Core States Group DGR Engineering Farnsworth Group, Inc. GDA Engineers Geosyntec Consultants, Inc. Glavé & Holmes Architecture Glotman.Simpson Consulting Engineers Great West Engineering, Inc. Harris Consulting Engineers, LLC Hart & Hickman, PC HMB Professional Engineers, Inc.HVJ Associates, Inc. InSite Engineering, LLC Jansen Strawn Consulting EngineersJLG Architects Jones & DeMille Engineering Inc. Kimley-Horn KL&A, Inc. Structural Engineers and BuildersKlohn Crippen Berger Ltd.Looney Ricks KissMKSKMoore Engineering, Inc.NCEP2S Engineering, Inc.Pape-Dawson Engineers, Inc.Parette Somjen Architects, LLCPES Structural Engineers, Inc.Phillips Architecture, PAPraxis3Prein&NewhofReady Engineering CorporationRobert Peccia & Associates, Inc.Robinson Consultants Inc.Rodgers Consulting, Inc.

Rowland+Broughton Architecture and Urban DesignRTM Engineering ConsultantsSchmidt Design Group, Inc.Seamon WhitesideSPEC Services, Inc.Spurlock Poirier Landscape ArchitectsTulloch EngineeringValcoustics Canada Ltd.Vertical Arts Inc.Wade TrimWeber ThompsonWilliams Blackstock Architects, PCWKMC Architects, Inc.

“The firms recognized in the Circle of Excellence set the bar for outstanding business results, confirming that success in any economy is possible,” says Allen. “Some firms have been in this prestigious group year after year!”

These 66 firms exemplify both the basic and most innovative best practices in the business, and they will be honored at PSMJ’s upcoming A/E/C Industry Summit.

Certainly, whatever level of success your firm has achieved or aims to achieve this year, there is always something to learn from those who have pushed the envelope in financial performance and business success. Why not ask them?

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PSMJ’S 2015 A/E BENCHMARK

SURVEY REPORTS ARE AVAILABLE

NOW!The A/E industry’s most current, relevant, and

comprehensive benchmark data is waiting for you...

BENCHMARKING YOUR A/E FIRM TO FINANCIAL GROWTHThe top-performing firms in the architecture and engineering industry are not only achieving greater than 35% profit but they are also collecting on their invoices in under 50 days, and they have the lowest overhead rates in the industry.

How have they gotten there? The answer to that question is really not a huge secret. The fact is that many of the most successful firms are consistently benchmarking for performance, a practice that is essential to understanding how firms compare to their peers within the industry.

“Best practices benchmarking takes it to the next level by comparing your firm to the top-performing firms in that industry,” says Kate Allen, P.E., Director of PSMJ’s A/E/C Industry Surveys. “Your passion may be your practice, but in today’s economy top‐notch business practices are critical for sustainability.”

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WHY BENCHMARK?Industry-specific benchmarking equips

firm decision makers with objective, fact-based data to build a persuasive business

case for change:

• How do you know where you need to go if you don’t know where you are? Analyze your data by selecting relevant metrics from

more than 25 peer groups.

• How do we get there? Develop key initiatives, backed by data, to define the

firm’s short- and long-term future.

• How did we do? Track success by keeping score using key performance metrics.

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PART TWO: THE ROAD TO SUCCESS FOR FIRST-TIME CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE MEMBER JLG ARCHITECTSGETTING TO WHERE WE’RE GROWING, ONE BABY STEP AT A TIME For first-time member JLG Architects, it has been a long but rewarding journey to the Circle of Excellence, one made up of what COO Michelle Mongeon Allen describes as a series of “baby steps” to success.

“We started our journey with PSMJ in 2007, and in the past 8 years have partnered with PSMJ to change our company—Principal Bootcamps, PM Bootcamps, ownership transition seminars, and strategic planning,” Allen says. “We set “Circle of Excellence” as a goal for our company and have worked very, very hard to make it happen.”

JLG Architects is a 100-percent employee-owned full-service architecture firm, founded in Grand Forks ND in 1989 by Lonnie Laffen and Gary Johnson. Today, the firm has grown to nine offices in Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, Dickinson, Williston, Brookings, Alexandria, and Minneapolis—with nearly 100 full-time employees.

MANAGING THE GROWING PAINSAccording to JLG’s Allen, it was nothing less than growing pains that led the firm to seek advice on how to effectively manage their business. “When I joined JLG, it was a 12-15 person firm, and when you are a small firm like that, it kind of runs itself,” she recalls. “But as you grow, if you don’t get more disciplined, the business can start running you. The problem back then was financial performance and financial controls—being in control of managing our business.”

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Then, in what Allen says is fortuitous, JLG received a flyer in the mail inviting them to attend a financial planning seminar. “My joke is that my CEO and I rubbed our last two nickels together, and bought plane tickets to Portland,” she recalls. “We learned there that ‘we don’t know what we don’t know.’ We learned that we benefit from others experience.”

Consequently, JLG’s sent their firm leaders first to PSMJ’s PM Bootcamp, and then to the Principals Bootcamp. “We had been hearing about these bootcamps, and thought we could not afford to go, but then realized that we could not afford not to go,” Allen says. “We needed to implement tools to be better managers of our individual projects.”

About the same time, JLG firm leaders were starting to talk about ownership transition. “We thought all we needed to do was update our buy-sell agreement,” Allen recalls. “We’d gone through three attorneys, and were completely frustrated, before we finally attended a PSMJ ownership transition seminar.”

According to Allen, JLG firm leaders went home with two takeaways: “We saw a sample buy-sell agreement that we could actually read and understand, which made us realize that it can be a usable tool,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be this big legal document that we don’t even understand. And #2, we realized that we had a bunch of stuff we needed to do first. The first thing on the list was strategic planning, so we engaged PSMJ.”

MAKING A STRATEGIC PLAN JLG did their first strategic planning in Fall 2009, identifying the most important things they needed to work on including:

1) an organizational model as they were starting to branch out to new geographic markets without a sense of how to work together

2) how to become a project-management based company

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“So as we came away with those action items,” Allen says, “we also talked a little bit more about ownership transition. But the biggest thing was that we came out with was a three-year business plan—and that all the action items were going to support us getting to where we needed to be (financially) by 2012.”

That was not only JLG’s first step in planning for financial success, but also it was their first introduction to a category of yellow columns down the middle of the strategic plan that said Circle of Excellence (COE), i.e. the key benchmarks or metrics that top performing firms pay attention to in how they perform.

“We started to get a glimpse of not only of how JLG performed in the past three years, but also how we were hoping to perform, and then the gap between that and what top performing firms do,” Allen notes. “It just planted the seed for the kind of company that we could become. We owned it, and believed it, and we had a great controller (who is now our CFO) Jason Haagenson who took ownership and guided us on how meet the metrics.”

In addition, JLG worked very hard as a company to take their action items seriously, and so made significant changes. “First of all, we developed an organizational structure, and it became a tool that we use every day in evaluating decisions for our company,” Allen says. “That exercise really set the big picture that we are one company, and not separate profit

centers. That is a big guiding principle for us.” They also focused on becoming a project management-based firm. “We created a job description of project manager, and sent those people to PM Bootcamp,” Allen says. “They learned about the tools, and we started to “baby step” (a big mantra of mine) ourselves towards being a project management culture.”

And so, when JLG firm leaders reviewed their financial plan in 2012, they found that—due to such a concerted effort—they had met their financial targets. And the most significant thing, according to Allen, was that it built confidence. “We looked back at 2009 and said, at the time, ‘how are in the world are we going to meet those numbers,’ ” she recalls. “They were unbelievable and unattainable. And then, three years later, we saw where our discipline has gotten us. It totally empowered us as an organization.”

MOVING TOWARDS CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE STATUSIn 2013, JLG updated their strategic plan, setting their 2016 financial goals with metrics that pushed them towards Circle of Excellence member status. “Even back in 2013, it was unbelievable that we could be in the company of Circle of Excellence firms in three years,” Allen says. “But, you know what, in 2009, we didn’t believe we could do it either, so we said ‘let’s just keep on doing what we are doing; let’s make the hard decisions; and let’s work toward it.’ ”

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However, there were also a number of key initiatives that enabled JLG to attain 2015 COE member metrics. “We continued to constantly evolve and become better managers of our business, and our project management processes,” Allen says. “We also kept the conversation and momentum going with our ownership transition discussion.”

One such initiative was the development of a “success formula.” “A PSMJ ownership transition guide talked about developing a success formula, and so in my role, I just started writing down some things,” Allen says. “What are the things that make us successful? At that the same time, my CEO was on a plane, and he came back all excited. He called me and said ‘I was thinking that if I was going to start a firm from scratch, what would be the most important things I’d need to do?’ ”

To Allen’s surprise, the two lists were very similar. “And so we wove those two things together, and we built a success formula,” she says. “I call it our manifesto—It is built on 10 tenets, which are our core values that anyone in our company can recite. We use it all the time in recruiting, and we have built our management team around these key principles.”

Besides developing a success formula, JLG also continued to expand into new geographic markets, as well as to define a list of practice areas. “Our expansion was geographic, but also at the same time as our company was growing financially, and we were doing more projects,” Allen explains. “So, we started to identify that we had some key portfolios of work. We started to build some marketing material, and branding of our company around some key studios to represent ourselves as regional experts.”

And finally, as JLG continued down the path of ownership transition, they eventually realized that they had outgrown their ownership transition model. “There was really no way our plan was going to work because we were growing too quickly, and the value had gone to high,” Allen says. “We didn’t have enough people who could come in fast enough or be able to buy enough of the company to make that work.”

And so, as of December, 2014, JLG is 100% employee owned. “We are really proud of that,” Allen says. “We were always a firm that had a culture of ownership, so it just enhances that culture—and that’s where we are today.” l

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BACK TO BASICS TO ATTRACT TOP TALENTAt many A/E firms, attracting and keeping design talent remains a key challenge—especially if you are not located in a major geographic market. That was certainly the case with JLG Architects.

“We were in a growth mode, and were advertising and trying to hire, yet it was almost impossible for us to recruit people,” recalls JLG Architects COO Michelle Mongeon Allen. “First of all, a move to North Dakota—try to make that sell. And, when we could get people who were interested in North Dakota, they weren’t the cream of the crop, and didn’t fit into our culture very well.”

It didn’t take long for JLG management to recognize that not being able to recruit top talent was going to be a constraint to the firm’s growth. “If we can’t get great people, how are we going to grow?” Allen offers. “So we stepped back and asked: What’s ‘worked for us in the past? We started our company with great people. How did we do it?’ ”

Basically, the firm had a history of hiring graduates from North Dakota State University (NDSU). “They came to work for JLG, and they stayed because we are a great company,” Allen says. “The other great candidate is someone who grew up in North Dakota or in our region, moved out into the world to do things, started having kids, and wants to move home. We absolutely want that top talent who want to move home, for JLG to be their choice.”

In fact, one of JLG strategic goals is to be nothing less than the firm of choice for top talent, and so the firm shifted their recruiting strategy around to focus on and invest in a strong relationship with the architecture program at NDSU in Fargo.

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“According to our strategic plan, we would have a growth of 6%, and that 90% of that growth, was going to come from new graduates,” Allen says. “And that we were going to convince all of those new graduates to move to Grand Forks for three years, and we would train them, we would invest in their career development. We wanted them to build strong peer relationships to get immersed in our culture, and then from there, they would have opportunities for leadership in other offices across our company.”

Although JLG took a big risk and put all of their eggs in one basket, it has paid off hugely, according to Allen. “We have been hiring the top 10 percent of the graduating class of NDSU for the past three years,” she says. “And this will be the first year where we are starting to transition those people out to our other offices.”

“This was a huge change for us,” Allen concludes, “and a recognition that to preserve and build our culture, our greatest success was going to be people who have grown up in the markets that we are trying to move into.” l

MICHELLE MONGEON ALLEN, AIA IS CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER AT JLG ARCHITECTS

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PART THREE: THE SECRETS OF RECURRING CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE MEMBERSINTRODUCING OUR COE ROUNDTABLE PANEL

PSMJ’s 2015 Circle of Excellence, the 66 exceptional firms that represent the top 20% of the participants in its 2015 A/E Financial Performance Benchmark Survey, includes firms of all sizes, practice areas, and geographic locations. They represent a cross section of the A/E industry today, and they are achieving outstanding success.

While 22 firms joined the COE ranks for the first time in 2015, the remaining 44 have made it onto this exclusive list more than once, if not a number of years in a row. PSMJ has honored those firms that have been a COE member more than four years in row, designating these consistently high-performing firms as Platinum Members.

Among this year’s Platinum members are: Little Rock, AR-based Brown Engineers and San Antonio, TX-based Pape-Dawson Engineers. Here, these firms join a roundtable of other recurring Circle of Excellence members to discuss their approaches to three key areas—strategic planning, being responsive to firm clients, and finding and keeping the best talent—and how they have leveraged each to achieve outstanding success, not just this year, but for a number of years in a row.

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WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE IN PSMJ’S CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE? The firms represented here are as diverse as the A/E industry itself. To be sure, they all have unique approaches to strategizing for success depending on their own specific markets, niches, sizes, and locations. It is also true that there are no “silver bullets”—and a strategy that is right for one firm may not be right for another. So what separates these firms from the herd?

They are different because they have distinct vision and live distinct values. They adopt and carry out ideas that are consistent with their visions and values. They know it is not enough to do one thing extremely well. Well-run firms do scores of things extremely well. Things as simple as having an associate answer the phone in the office or maintaining regular contact with a client that is not currently doing a project. And most importantly, they measure their success and constantly take steps to improve in all areas.

LISTED HERE IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY FIRM NAME, OUR COE ROUNDTABLE PANEL INCLUDES:Ben Quinn, Sr. - CEOAmerican Engineers, Inc. / Glasgow, KYWith more than 22 years of experience in urban and rural roadway design, American Engineers, Inc. (AEI) is a professional engineering firm with a successful, proven history of providing innovative and cost effective transportation, structural, geotechnical, and environmental solutions to their clients. This is the second year in a row that American Engineers has been a COE member.

Dee Brown, P.E. - Co-Founder & PrincipalBrown Engineers, LLC / Little Rock, ARFounded in 1989, Brown Engineers, LLC, a 14-person firm headquartered in Little Rock, AR, specializes in electrical, mechanical, and automation engineering. This is the fifth year in a row that Brown Engineers has been a COE member.

Pete Smith, AIA - President and CEOBWBR / St. Paul, MNFounded in 1922, the 140-person multi-disciplinary design firm BWBR, with offices in St. Paul, MN, and Madison, WI, helps create innovative, efficient, intuitive environments by providing clients with comprehensive solutions to complex needs.This is the third year in a row that BWBR has been a COE member.

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Kevin Carpenter, P.E., P.S. - Founding Principal Carpenter Marty Transportation / Dublin, OHFormerly WD Transportation, a division of WD Partners, Carpenter Marty Transportation (CMTran) was founded in 2013 by Kevin Carpenter and Bill Marty. Now in its second year with 24 employees, CMTran provides bridge, right-of-way, roadway, survey, and traffic design services. This is the second year in a row that CMTran has been a COE member.

Bruce Hickman, P.E. - PrincipalHart & Hickman, PC / Charlotte, NCHart & Hickman, PC (Hart & Hickman) is an environmental consulting firm serving clients throughout the Southeast U.S. Its team of engineers, geologists, scientists, and regulatory specialists provide technical expertise to clients to reduce environmental liability and costs based on project-specific needs and objectives.This is the second year in a row that Hart & Hickman has been a COE member.

Didi Ndando, P.E. - VP, Finance and AdministrationHVJ Associates, Inc. / Houston, TXHVJ Associates, Inc. provides a range of geotechnical, construction material, environmental and pavement engineering services. HVJ, a Texas corporation founded in Houston in 1985, has been providing

engineering services for more than 25 years. HVJ is certified as a HUB and MBE/DBE. In August 2000, the firm opened its first branch offices in Austin and San Antonio, and in 2004 opened its office in Dallas. Combined, these four offices employ over 85 engineers, scientists, and technicians. This is the second year in a row that HVJ Associates has been a COE member.

Jeffry Volk P.E., P.L.S. - President & CEOMoore Engineering, Inc. / West Fargo, NDHeadquartered in West Fargo, ND, with satellite offices in North Dakota and West Central Minnesota, Moore Engineering, Inc. (Moore) is a 140-person employee-owned firm that has completed more than 15,000 civil engineering projects in its 50-year history. Among the firm’s specialties are municipal consulting, water and wastewater, water resources, land surveying, land and site development,and transportation.This is the third year in a row that Moore has been a COE member.

Sam Dawson, P.E. CEOPape-Dawson Engineers, Inc. / San Antonio, TXOften referred to as the largest and most influential engineering firm in South and Central Texas, 400-person firm Pape-Dawson Engineers, Inc. (Pape-Dawson) was founded in 1965 as a two-man civil engineering firm by Gus Pape and Gene Dawson. Headquartered

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in San Antonio, TX, and focusing on civil engineering and surveying projects, the firm now has offices in Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. Emphasizing family values, character, and moral integrity, Pape-Dawson’s goal is to become their clients’ trusted partner.This is the fourth year in a row that Pape-Dawson has been a COE member.

Ryan Stancill - PrincipalPraxis3 / Atlanta, GAFounded in 1997, Praxis3 is a 33-person architecture and multi-disciplinary design firm headquartered in Atlanta, GA. With work spanning into 30 states and Puerto Rico, Praxis3 broadly specializes in retail, automotive, financial, civic, cultural, institutional, higher education, housing, and mixed-use design. In addition to architecture, planning, and sustainable/LEED design, Praxis3 also provide interiors, retail rollout, prototype, environmental graphics/signage, and graphic design. This is the second year in a row that Praxis3 has been a COE member.

Elizabeth Holland - PrincipalWeber Thompson / Seattle, WAWeber Thompson is a 65-person design practice specializing in architectural and interior design for high-rise condominiums, financial facilities, office buildings, apartments, and commercial properties. Headquartered in Seattle, WA in an award winning LEED Gold building, sustainability is infused throughout Weber Thompson’s culture, with 60% of the firm’s staff participating in sustainability practices. This is the third year in a row that Weber Thompson has been a COE member.

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Q&A: THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY OF STRATEGIC PLANNINGWe asked a panel of COE members about their strategic planning efforts, their successes and their failures.

Q: HOW DO YOU DO YOUR STRATEGIC PLANNING?Didi Ndando, HVJ Associates: Our Strategic Planning or Annual Operating Plan (AOP) process is based on an established Vision/Mission and Value Proposition. It has two phases; developing the plan, and then executing and monitoring. It can be likened to a moon shot where the first phase is to define where we want to go and then develop the plan to get there, and the second step is to navigate to ensure we land where we want.

Developing the plan goes through a process of speculating and formulating the plan, including a couple of scans:

A. An organization and process improvement scan to consider where we can eliminate waste, adopt best practices, and improve stakeholder satisfaction.

B. A business development scan where we consider where we landed in the previous year and what looks attractive now (like moving to other geographic areas, providing new services, market share, etc.)

Executing the plan and evaluating results requires continuously assessing where we are versus where we want to be, and taking corrective action.

The questions we address on an ongoing basis (Quarterly Business Reviews) in this phase include:

A. How did we do compared to the plan?B. How do we account for variances?C. Is our landing spot still viable and desirable?D. What changes to the plan are required?

Once we have landed we assess how far we are from our target destination and glean whatever lessons need to be learned and applied moving forward. We also instituted a structured incentive plan to reward and enforce the behaviors we want.

Dee Brown, Brown Engineers: Brown Engineers is about nine years old now and started with two guys, and today we’re at 14 full-time plus three part-time employees. We have mostly focused on the business of getting more work and growing our staff with very little actual strategic planning until last year when we engaged PSMJ, and Dave Burstein helped with on-site Strategic Planning. Dave helped us to see the benefit of a long-range plan including Ownership Transition. This has helped us confirm the direction of our firm.

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Pete Smith, BWBR: BWBR has been a successful practice for decades and because of that success, strategic planning has often been seen as “unnecessary.”

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When we have done strategic planning in the past it has been on the urging of one or more individuals who felt a need to answer some high-level questions like “what markets should we be in?” or “what kind of expertise might we be missing?” We have historically done strategic planning by the seat of the pants.

About ten years ago, we went through a change in leadership and strategic planning became more important as we lead our practice and in the last few years much more so.

Today our strategic planning efforts are planned out and intentional. It is not an exercise for the sake of the exercise… “there, we did that, can we not talk about strategic planning for a while?” but rather the process is meant to challenge our assumptions, anticipate our trajectory, and ideally be one (or more) steps ahead of our competition.

Q: WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR GREATEST STRATEGIC SUCCESSES?Didi Ndando, HVJ Associates: Our greatest successes have come recently from taking the time to define our vision/ mission and value proposition first, and designing a process which engages everyone in the company early in the speculation phase. This way we get benefit of diverse perspectives, and it is easier to develop firm-wide alignment and synergy once we decide what game we are going to play.

Dee Brown, Brown Engineers: Principal alignment is something that we came away with. Not that we weren’t already in general agreement, but there is something about seeing a vision for the future that looks reasonable and achievable that helps motivate us every day to continue to excel at our projects and also grow and develop our staff. The long-range financial benefits of an internal ownership transition look very promising.

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Pete Smith, BWBR: There have been many, but they generally fall into two categories. First, there are ways we have been able to outflank our competition and second the unintended benefits category. For instance we made a strategic decision about 20 years ago to market our services in Southeast Asia and this led to building relationships with local firms and a mutually beneficial relationship allowing us to create cultural exchanges between our firm and our Malaysian partner which has brought growth opportunities for our staff and improved our project delivery.

Q: WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR STRATEGIC FAILURES? WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM THEM?Didi Ndando, HVJ Associates: Our greatest failures have come from not doing the opposite of what is outlined in my response to the successes. There was a time when a mystery plan was decided essentially by the president without the benefit of all the forethought around vision and value proposition, then handed down for execution with no whys or wherefores.

This produced a lot of waste especially in disengagement and lack of ownership which then translated into poor results. These experiences taught us to do what we are doing now; take the time to think through what we want and care about first, then get input from everyone and develop a plan accordingly,

deciding what to keep, hold, or discard depending on what we care about most and where our resources should be channeled.

Dee Brown, Brown Engineers: Mostly just living in the moment day-to-day and getting the next project out, without much thought about a long-range plan.

Pete Smith, BWBR: Too often our strategic failures have been moves we have made based on gut or “taking a flyer.” These have been a series of learning opportunities. The primary lesson is not to avoid taking risks, but to take the steps to be plan-full about why we believe we should take the risk and not just wing it.

Q: WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?Didi Ndando, HVJ Associates: Our main focus is in the following areas:

A. Refine and improve the strategic planning process described above that we recently adopted, as well as document and refine other processes in the firm to eliminate waste and build a prototype to make it easier to train others quickly— and thus facilitate healthy growth and enhance our ability to serve stakeholders.

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B. Find and retain A-Players; employees who are a good fit for the culture of service, learning, and resourcefulness that we emphasize.

C. Focus more on public infrastructure projects (versus private projects) and expand to cover more of Texas.

Dee Brown, Brown Engineers: We developed a plan to grow by one or two staff each year and begin to look at our staff in terms of long-range development for client markets and ownership transition. That is a much more challenging and rewarding task.

Pete Smith, BWBR: Our current strategy is to grow our practice. There are two reasons we are doing this: we want to create opportunities for our staff. They have increasing options for employment and career paths, and we want them to choose BWBR. Growth creates opportunities that ripple through all levels of our organization.

The second reason is as we grow revenue (and more importantly net revenue) it brings resources for what we call “Strategic Investments.” Rather than the principals pocket more, we invest these additional resources in our Value Proposition (new services, stronger business expertise in our clients business, design and sustainability); Expertise (Finding talent, enhancing our training and development); and Culture (Knowledge Management and Research, BWBR YOUniversity).

However, what is our strategy for the next five years is an interesting question. We are currently in a strategic planning process to develop BWBR 2020. We have a three part process we are following: 1) Discovery 2) Vision and 3) Strategic Planning. The answer to your question is something I very much look forward to answering over the next 4-5 months.

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KEEPING YOUR CUSTOMERS CLOSE (AND LOYAL)Our COE member panel shares best practices in building strong client relationships. Dee Brown, Brown EngineersBE RESPONSIVE TO CLIENTSBrown’s emphasis on building a close, cooperative corporate culture has enabled the firm to focus on what’s most important to its success—the clients. “[One of the] most important things is being responsive to your clients, or architects, or engineers—whomever you’re working with,” Brown says.

Though being courteous, being kind, and being responsive might sound like “kindergarten rules,” according to Brown, he has heard from clients on more than one occasion that such responsiveness is not the norm.

“We’ve had calls from a client and might not have been able to answer immediately, but called right back within 20 or 30 minutes. And before we got off the phone, the client would say, ‘Hey, thanks for calling me back.’ After the second or third time that happened, I asked, ‘We’re fairly new in our relationship with you, and you thank us for calling you back. What does that mean? Do you really have people who

don’t call you back?’ He told me that they have people that don’t take the time to call them back or email them. Those are the ways to build relationships with people. Give answers to them now, when they need them. Those simple things are what we do to build repeat business.”

LET CLIENTS MARKET FOR YOUAlmost solely a result of Brown Engineering’s success at keeping their clients happy, the firm was able to expand into other nationwide markets. Instead of marketing aggressively, they let their reputation precede them.“We weren’t really having to market ourselves to a new area,” Brown says. “It was more of a relational connection with a civil engineer. Really, our marketing was by reputation or relationships, much more so than traditional cold calling or opening up a new office in a new metropolis and trying to start from scratch.”

Pete Smith, AIA, BWBRNEVER FORGET YOUR MISSION STATEMENTIn addition to the paying attention to instilling in employees the significance of the firm’s brand, Smith and BWBR’s leadership also focus on managers’ adherence to the mission statement.

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“We emphasize to our managers that they’re not just evaluated on whether they’re making the numbers,” Smith says. “It’s not just about the money. If they’re making tons of money, but not developing relationships, then they’re not serving our mission statement.

If they have great relationships, but are not creating distinguished architecture, then they’re not fulfilling our mission statement. Their job is to make sure they’re doing all aspects of our mission statement, and as long as they keep doing that, we know we’re going to be successful.”

Kevin Carpenter, Carpenter Marty Transportation

KEEP YOUR CLIENTS CLOSE THROUGH ACTIVE COMMUNICATION

Carpenter understands the axiom that a happy client will tell two people, whereas a dissatisfied client will tell ten. With that in mind, Carpenter stresses the importance of regular client communication.

“We place a premium on communications, keeping [clients] engaged—where we are in the process and answering any questions or any circumstances of the project. We want the client to be engaged in that so that when we submit something they understand why we did something, and they’re not seeing it for the first time,” says Carpenter. “We’re very cognizant of the fact that we have to treat every project like

it’s our only project so that the client feels they’re getting the best effort from us, so that we can get repeat business.”

CMTran goes about client service in two ways:

1. Principals are actively involved. “Bill Marty [Founding Principal] and I are actively engaged in projects,” says Carpenter. “When we talk to a client about a project, we’re not getting information second-hand from the person doing the work. We spend time on projects so we know what’s going on.”

2. Projects are thoroughly checked and re-checked. According to Carpenter, “every project that goes out is designed, reviewed, and checked by three different people. It hurts us in that it takes time, money, and effort. But we realize the importance of doing that to make sure that it’s done correctly, and the client is getting what they want.”

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Sam Dawson, Pape-Dawson Engineers, Inc.

ALIGN WITH CLIENTS OF THE SAME BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

For Pape-Dawson’s CEO, Sam Dawson, success is largely about alignment—namely, the firm’s alignment with clients of the same business philosophy and staff alignment with the firm’s values. With these two aspects of the practice in place, the firm as a whole is able to focus on its mission statement of being the most respected firm in Texas.

“The very first thing we do is try to align ourselves with a client base that has the same business philosophy as we do, so right from the beginning, there’s a deep relationship with our clients,” says Dawson. “We do the same with our staff—we want to make sure a potential employee matches the value system of the firm, which is based on family values, integrity, and character. Our entire philosophy is focused on this value system—our number one priority is to be a respected company. Not the richest or the biggest, but the most respected.”

Jeffry Volk, Moore Engineering

DO WHAT YOU DO BEST

With 90% of its work generated from repeat clients, Moore prides itself on its commitment to high professional business standards and sustainable business practices. Representing about a quarter of Moore’s work annually, the city of West Fargo—population 30,000—has been Moore’s largest municipal client for 50 years.

According to Volk, the key to the firm’s continued success will be its ability to grow with strong talent, maintain above-average profitability, and—perhaps most important— not give in to the temptation to be something it isn’t.

At times in Moore’s history, the firm has flirted with expanding outside of its niche. The firm’s leadership realized, however, that the way to ensure quality (and happy clients!) is to stick to what you know. “We know what we do well, and that’s what we do,” says Volk. “We don’t try to be something we aren’t.”

This resolve on the part of the firm’s leadership to “know thyself ” has permeated the firm’s culture, mission statement—and even business development efforts. “About ten years ago we decided to stop chasing projects,” says Volk. “And we haven’t lost a client to larger regional or national companies because they can’t compete with us. We are experts at what we do.”

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TIPS TO HIRING AND RETAINING THE BEST Our COE member panelists share a variety of powerful and creative ideas—not only on how to hire the right people but also to keep them for the long term.

Ben Quinn, Sr. , CEO American Engineers, Inc.

GET RID OF NON-PERFORMERS—IF NOT FOR YOUR SAKE, THAN FOR EVERYONE ELSE’S!

Quinn, Sr. learned early on that the key to a successful practice was ensuring that every employee was a top-performer. “We decided that any employee that’s not pulling their weight, we’re not going to carry,” says Quinn, Sr. “We ended up letting go of a handful of people who had not been carrying their weight and that greatly incentivized the hard-working people who remained. We’re at around 100 employees now, and there’s not one employee that I’d say today, ‘Hey, we need to think about getting rid of that person.’ We love everyone we’ve got. Each of those employees have an integral part to play in AEI. And that’s great to be able to say. The employees have made AEI successful.”

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ALWAYS INVEST IN TRAINING—EVEN DURING TOUGH TIMES!Even during the recession, Quinn, Sr. recognized the importance of keeping staff training and development front and center on the firm’s to-do list. “While everyone else was hunkering down, we spent money, investing in our future,” Quinn, Sr. says. “We did in-house training for our staff, project management training, Ajera training—we spent two years just making our workflow stronger.”

All of this training—and the strengthening of the firm’s workflow—ultimately paid off. After completing strategic business planning with PSMJ in 2012, in which a five-year plan to double AEI’s income was put into effect, AEI exceeded its first-year goal by so much that the plan had to be amended. AEI reached the new, even more ambitious five-year goal as of December 2014—three years early.

Dee Brown, Brown Engineers

BE HIGHLY PROTECTIVE OF CULTURE WHEN HIRING

With eight professional engineers on their team, Brown Engineering has become registered in 14 states over the past five years, including Texas, Wyoming, California, Florida, and Georgia—all without opening regional offices.

“People don’t really care where your office is out of anymore,” says Brown. “It almost doesn’t matter. We like our culture here [in Little Rock, AR]. We like our people in the same place, working together. That’s worked well for us so we’re going to stick with that.”

In a firm as small as Brown Engineering, the close relationships shared among the employees transfers to personal attention given to the clients—and because of that, Brown closely guards its corporate culture in the hiring process.

“We’re highly protective of our culture here,” says Brown, “and have tried to find folks we enjoy working with. Engineers can be a finicky bunch of folks. They’re very smart and some are highly social, some aren’t social at all. We have tried to look for those personalities first, and then talk about technical skills.” Acknowledging that hiring at Brown Engineering is a “slow process,” Brown dismisses the use of want ads for more “relational connections, people around town.” Hiring at Brown means “a lot of lunches and coffee shop talks and being out in the community,” Brown says. He also considers talent who come highly recommended through personal referral.

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Pete Smith, BWBR

TRAIN STAFF TO UNDERSTAND CORPORATE CULTURE AND EXEMPLIFY THE BRAND

Smith, who has been with BWBR for more than 27 years, attributes the firm’s remarkable 93-year longevity and continued success to its culturally ingrained, business-centered mentality. The firm supports this mentality by emphasizing technological advancement, institutionalized employee training, and clear target-setting.

According to Smith, a key aspect of BWBR’s success is how it has responded to growth— namely, by being acutely aware of the need (and positive results of!) strategic employee training.

At BWBR’s annual training retreat—BWBR YOUniversity—both new and experienced employees are trained on the corporate culture, which emphasizes the principles of a business-centered practice and the importance of collaboration.

“In that two days [of the BWBR YOUniversity retreat], we talk to the employees about the history of the firm, the cultural evolution of the firm, and we emphasize that the next chapter is theirs to write,” Smith says. “We talk a lot about our business practice and emphasize the business part of the practice, but we also emphasize collaboration. In the end, that’s what BWBR YOUniversity is all about— getting people together who don’t typically work together.”

Smith also sees BWBR YOUniversity an opportunity to instill within each employee a keen understanding of the relationship between the firm’s brand and its success.

“We’re trying to ensure our brand of ‘Engage, Empower, and Enhance.’ The idea behind that is that we try to engage everybody, whether it’s a new person or our clients. Our clients are very involved in our design; we don’t design and sell to the client, we engage our client. In terms of empowerment, we make sure everyone has a voice in the process, and for enhance—well, this business is hard enough if you don’t enjoy it so we want to make sure it’s an enjoyable process.”

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REWARD YOUR EMPLOYEESFor those employees who work hard to exemplify the mission statement and do more with less, rewards are a guaranteed part of the practice. According to Smith, “In terms of the benefit, every single person in the firm has gotten a bonus and was included in profit-sharing, even during the recession. It’s just a part of our practice: if you help generate value, you’ll receive value.”

Kevin Carpenter, Carpenter Marty Transportation

HIRE FOR PERSONALITY FIRST

With such an emphasis on communication and a keen understanding of the “make-or-break” nature of even one less-than-thrilled client, CMTran is extremely selective in its hiring process. Choosing to hire people for careers, not projects, Carpenter wants to be absolutely certain whomever he hires is the right fit—for him, and his close-knit staff of 24.

“Being only 24 people, it’s a very intimate group. I don’t have an office; I sit on the floor with everybody else—it’s a very open, dynamic culture,” says Carpenter. “So, we spend a lot of time with an interview process. I think you can teach someone to be a good engineer, but I can’t teach you to get along with everybody. So, we’re progressing very slowly to make sure that we do it correctly and get the biggest impact possible.”

In particular, Carpenter looks for the following in a new hire:

1. Personality—specifically, Type A.“I find a lot time speaking with references and finding out the character of these people,” he says. “I ask, “’Does [the candidate] take ownership of what they’re doing? Follow through with communications well?’

Engineers tend to be very narrowly focused. The old joke is, ‘How do you tell an extroverted engineer? Because he looks at your feet instead of his own.’ And that tends to be true.”

2. Comfortable engaging in verbal and written form. “A lot of the reports we do tend to be dry because it’s all just engineering analysis. We like to have people who are able to step out of that and write for a different audience—so, maybe they’re writing for a service director or writing for a public meeting, for example.”

For Carpenter, engineering is teachable, but the above characteristics are something you either have, or you don’t. And, so far, this approach seems to be working: CMTran has enjoyed very low turnover.

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Bruce Hickman, Hart & Hickman

REWARD YOUR STAFF INVENTIVELY—AND OFTEN

Rewarding staff for jobs well done has become an art and a point of pride at Hart & Hickman. Believing that a motivated, appreciated staff performs better, the firm has implemented several strategies to incentivize staff, including:

• “Atta boy:” recognition of achievement, usually in the form of gift certificates to local stores or Amazon.

• Rainmakeraward:award/trophy for bringing in new work.

• Guardianaward: award given to a person who does a good job overseeing a project given to them by a senior partner.

• Promotiontrophies.

• Paidovertimetostaffforbillablework.

• Spotbonuses: bonuses to encourage specific good behaviors.

• Expandedprofit-sharing(5%).

• SafeHarbor401(k): employees receive 3% from Hart & Hickman at the beginning of their tenure as an employee.

• EmployeeSpotlights: Every one-to-two months in staff meetings, a peer gathers curious information about the spotlighteD employee and prepares a PowerPoint presentation of fun facts about and obscure photos of the employee. The rest of the staff must try to guess who the featured employee is.

• “Shoutout”wall: a 10x12 whiteboard paint wall in the entryway to the firm’s headquarters used for thank yous, jokes, announcements, holiday pictures, etc. In addition to these incentives, Hart & Hickman also has a mentoring program, a “buddy” program, and several annual company outings—such as trips to a professional carting track, paintball outings, and ropes courses.

All of these efforts have resulted in a staff that feels comfortable in voicing their opinions and sharing their ideas. “Two weeks into 2015, I got nine different initiatives that are all assigned to people that are not owners,” says Hickman. “It’s great to hear so many different voices in the firm.” It’s worth it to make new hires survive “the gauntlet.”

Hart & Hickman has a rigorous recruiting process from which it has had tremendous success. After reviewing a candidate’s resume, Hart & Hickman then proceeds with a phone interview. If all goes well there, the firm obtains transcripts next—“academic performance does matter,” says Hickman— “and also requires writing samples.”

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Provided the candidate’s academic credentials are impressive enough, he or she then takes the MRA profile, described by Hickman as “a tool like Myers-Briggs, but for business.” At that point, references are called as the candidate is brought in for the in-person interview— otherwise known at the firm as “the gauntlet.”

“During the gauntlet, the candidate will meet with at least one or two owners, a couple of peers, and then meet with some intermediate people that they may be reporting to,” says Hickman. “It’s a three-to-four hour process, during which they’re also required to take multiple quizzes on their attention to detail, critical reasoning, and technical skills. We’re also paying close attention to personality: are they going to fit in? Are they assertive, arrogant, confident, timid? All of this is extremely important in determining a cultural fit.”

Ultimately, this process has paid off: it’s helped Hart & Hickman find individuals with both technical expertise and culturally compatible personalities, and as such, the firm enjoys as a very low turnover.

Jeffry Volk, Moore Engineering

GROW TALENT FROM WITHIN

In addition to being smart about what projects they pursue, Moore’s leadership also attributes the firm’s success to its “home-grown” project managers. As a firm that grew faster than its organizational structure was prepared for, Moore faced a lot of difficult management challenges bringing on new, inexperienced project managers that were then expected to make high-profile, client-facing decisions. In response, Moore developed an innovative mentoring approach to bring its younger engineers into project management roles more quickly.

“Our project engineers work with seasoned project managers very early in their development,” says Volk. “Once they understand the service part of the business, then you can teach them the business part of the business. It’s great for our young staff to see there are opportunities to grow into higher levels of management.”

Of course, Moore still seeks to bring experienced project managers into the company. Developing existing engineers more quickly allows Moore to continue growing in the region’s tight labor market.

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CONSIDER AN ESOP TO EMPOWER EMPLOYEESWith the firm relying so much on the younger staff to assume higher-level roles, staff retention is a significant concern of Moore’s leadership. Says Volk: “We recognize that we really need to take care of the younger engineers because if we can’t find experienced engineers quickly enough externally to meet our growth needs, we need to develop them internally.” Fortunately, Volk feels that Moore’s status as a 100% ESOP makes the firm very attractive for current and future employees alike.

“We went 100% ESOP in 2004, and in that 11-year period, we’ve tripled our staff—but quadrupled our revenue,” says Volk. “We’re growing revenue faster than staff. As such, we incentivize our staff very well: there’s a bonus incentive compensation package; we have cash contributions in our ESOP; profit-sharing; and we’re very generous with our retirement program. I know we’ve got competition calling, but we simply don’t lose managers. The last time we lost a project manager, he moved to the East Coast—and then came back!”

Along with the benefits of an ESOP, Volk finds that the personal touch always helps with retention and recruitment—for instance, once they’re back at school, Volk hand-signs thank you letters to the graduate engineer interns who served with Moore over the course of the year—and includes a bonus. “We end up getting the best graduate engineers,” says Volk. “And we get them on board even before they graduate, so they get integrated into the firm a lot quicker.”

Sam Dawson, Pape-Dawson Engineers, Inc.AS THE CEO, BE VERY INVOLVED IN HIRING

To ensure this outcome, Dawson recommends a careful, deliberate hiring process in which the CEO of the firm is intricately involved. “We hire out of colleges for interns, but we do a very comprehensive and aggressive campus visit program,” says Dawson. “With our hiring practices, not only is it our HR manager that does all of the screening, I, as the CEO of the company, interview 100% of the candidates. If you’re going to be a respected company, it starts with what kind of people you hire and the value system of a company needs to match the value system of an employee.”

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CREATE A SUPPORTIVE CULTUREOnce the desired candidate is hired, the firm’s leadership works hard to create an environment in which employees feel comfortable, accepted, and supported. “We try to create a very learned and forgiving atmosphere,” says Dawson. “We recognize that people will make mistakes. We try to surround all members of our staff with people who will give of themselves to help the people around them succeed. If you help the people around you succeed, then you will succeed, individually and personally. We’re about being a company first, and individuals second. So, we have a very team-oriented climate.”

PROVIDE TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES RELATED TO YOUR BUSINESS PHILOSOPHYTo support the team-oriented climate at Pape-Dawson, the firm provides many annual opportunities for team building activities— but, unlike other firms, Pape-Dawson’s team-building activities often relate directly to their mission statement to participate in “professional, religious, and civic associations.”

“We have a lot of training programs and company events—like baseball teams and basketball teams—but our company philosophy focuses a lot on community events where we give back to the community,” says Dawson. “So, we work with Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank programs, and we try to get every member of Pape-Dawson involved in one community outreach program per year. That creates a lot of comradery.” In addition, Dawson relates, his firm participates in many activities on a weekly basis to bring the company together to “work together and play together.”

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Ryan Stancill, Praxis3

LEARN FROM YOUR HIRING MISTAKES

With a team of 33 people, up from 13 people just a few years ago, Praxis3 has enjoyed a recent growth spurt. Though open to the idea of expanding more, Ryan Stancill, one of Praxis3’s Principals, considers the firm to be in a “sweet spot”—a place where, if strategic business or hiring decisions need to be made, those decisions can be made fairly quickly and easily.

Finding that “sweet spot,” however, hasn’t necessarily been a straightforward process. “Hiring is hands-down one of the hardest things we’ve had to deal with,” says Stancill. “And we’ve learned from mistakes. A struggle we have is finding the people that are the right fit for the organization—people that have the right skill set, but also the right mindset to thrive in an organization like ours.”

Stancill continues: “We’ve brought in people from some of the really big design firms, some of the biggest in the world, who are used to working on large, million-dollar projects that go on for years … And those folks have really struggled here because we run pretty small teams that juggle a lot of projects, and it’s a pretty fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment in which people have to wear a lot of hats and change hats a lot.”

Keep hiring a question on the table at all timesOne way that Praxis3 has found to remedy hiring problems of the past is to keep the question of hiring on the table at all times, instead of hiring in batches. “In the past couple of years, it’s become a weekly discussion,” says Stancill. “Do we need to take on more people? Do we need to be looking forward? And so something we’ve done over the past couple of years is really rely more heavily on people we have who know our organization and their networks, and offering financial incentives in hiring like-minded people. Certainly not all our people we’ve hired that way, but we’ve gotten a lot of really good employees and interviews through that process.”

CHANGE COMPENSATION POLICIES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TIMESOnce the right-fit candidates have been hired, Praxis3 incentivizes them to stay through a competitive salary and benefits package and high bonuses. Unlike many design firms, Praxis3 also offers compensation for overtime pay, a decision made to motivate current hires. “When we were coming out of the recession, and we were nervous about hiring a bunch of people, we decided to make a policy change,” says Stancill.

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“We would pay overtime in addition to salary and bonuses, which not a lot of design firms do. Our thought process was that it was a way for people to have immediate payback for all the hard work they were putting in and allow people to do overtime work. So, it’s doing two things: it’s helping them get compensated more and helps us alleviate the burden of hiring a bunch more people.”

MAKE SURE BONUSES ARE WELL-EARNEDBonuses are not given out lightly at Praxis3, however: despite the financial success of a particular project, the leadership wants to know that individuals have significantly contributed to the success of the company. “It’s not just about, ‘Have you brought in business?’ or done something for financial gain,” says Stancill. “Have you been participating in office activities like lunch-and-learns and technical meetings? Are you someone who’s willing to engage with your neighbor and help them out? Do you mentor younger people? All of those things are important—what we’re trying to do is take a long-term view of someone’s contribution, not just if they made a lot of money. It’s a balance, a little bit of both. You can’t have one without the other.”

Elizabeth Holland, Weber Thompson

DOING DIFFERENT TO KEEP EMPLOYEES ENGAGED

Now in its 27th year, Weber Thompson is one of the most prolific high-rise and midrise residential architects on the West Coast. According to Principal Elizabeth Holland, a key aspect to the firm’s success is its top-notch team—a team that’s not only productive and efficient, but also highly engaged.

Promote a flexible schedule. According to Weber Thompson’s website, a balance between work and life is encouraged because it leads to a “greater, more interesting individual— someone we would be excited to work with.”Holland affirms this idea: “We understand that everyone has a life, and we really promote a work/life balance,” says Holland. “We don’t want people here 60 hours a week. We find that you start to work with the law of diminishing returns the longer people work during the week unless they get to spend some time decompressing. We get the best work when people have the opportunity to look beyond their job and explore other things— creatively and socially. That also results in a really strong group within the office.”

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INSIST ON COLLABORATIONAt Weber Thompson, collaboration is a big watchword, according to Holland, and cooperation among all of the firm’s disciplines is strongly encouraged. Holland attributes this collaboration, in part, to the firm’s success on its projects: “Our architects are always consulting with our interior designers. Whether we have an interior design contract or not, our interior designers are still looking at the space and unit planning on any given project, and are working with our landscape architects—informing from the outside in. Our technical people also try to cross-pollinate among the disciplines and work really hard to ensure each project is well-rounded.”

DON’T PUT UP WITH EGOSBecause Weber Thompson stresses the importance of a work/life balance, it enjoys the absence of egos. “There aren’t a lot of ‘bad attitudes’ in the office,” says Holland. “We try to have an ego-less workplace where everyone is working together for the greater good.”

GIVE THE STAFF A COMMON CAUSESustainability is a value for Weber Thompson that the staff and leadership try to incorporate into all of the projects—and they practice what they preach. The firm integrates sustainability into the daily practices of the firm starting with their passively cooled, LEED platinum office space. The firm is committed to the AIA 2030 Commitment which covers improving office operations, a strategic sustainability plan, and a focus on tracking project performance internally. This is all overseen by an internal leadership group, led by their Director of Sustainability.

CREATE A SOCIAL ATMOSPHEREWith an emphasis on sustainability and the ‘greater good’—and the staff ’s flexible work hours—there’s opportunities for social bonds to form. “There are a lot of strong friendships in the office and big groups go to happy hour frequently on Fridays,” says Holland. “Serious social bonds are formed because we have an environment that promotes work/life balance—not everyone is so burnt out at the end of the day that he or she feels the need to go directly home. It helps that we are all pretty great people.”

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EMPLOY A MIXED GROUPWeber Thompson also tries to hire a good mix of people, with the idea that it will keep designs fresh and allow for diverse perspectives. “The make-up of our group is pretty much across the board,” says Holland. “We have a very age and gender-mixed group. There’s still a strong social aspect even for people who’ve been here a number of years.”

PROVIDE TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIESTo encourage socialization among the group of employees, Weber Thompson also sponsors group team-building activities. Among the regular events are dim sum lunches, an employee art show, chili cook-off, plein air sketching lunches, bagel Fridays, summer picnics, and a staff volleyball team. l

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