Engineering Management Institute

individual goals

The Talent Bus Does Not Have to Feel Like the Struggle Bus!

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This is a guest post by Jacob Valentien, PE 
The Talent Bus Does Not Have to Feel Like the Struggle Bus! - Team members

As I am sure everyone in the civil engineering industry and associated disciplines would agree, it seems like there is always a need for more help. With how fast it seems that things are moving and how quickly some markets are growing, building a quality team in a timely fashion is no easy endeavor. Balancing the backlog with the appropriate number of team members has always been challenging.

I want to tell you…

Over the last couple of years, I have been helping grow a satellite office of a larger firm from less than five people to now close to 20 — and still growing. I wanted to share some of the helpful guidelines and thought processes that we use as navigational beacons for recruiting, interviewing, and hiring to build our team.

Getting the Right People on the Bus

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Providing Stellar Client Service: Engage Holistically

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This is a guest blog by Mike Burns, PE, PgMP, DBIA

customer service

As we commence a discussion about client service, I find myself reflecting on my first Engineering Management Institute (EMI) blog, “Think Big, Be Mindful.” Serving our clients and growing market share should create synergies with our individual goals and personal lives. Again, allowing us to evolve our vision as intentions, setting direction — not prescribing a destination. In this instance, we are going to set intentions by broadening our client perspective. This broader perspective allows us to avoid boundaries that might erode our individual and collective paths to success.

I thoroughly enjoy considering and discussing the complex programs and projects that AEC professionals serve. Like many of you, this enjoyment has allowed me to grow from technical roles into leadership positions with increasing business development (BD) responsibilities, realizing along the way that I am not a natural salesperson. Yet, I benefit from and continue to enjoy working with exceptional marketing, BD, and operations colleagues, who help me to refine my approach to winning work and providing stellar client services. Along the way, one of these wonderful colleagues introduced me to Heidi Gardner’s book.

Mrs. Gardner’s extended title necessitates a deeper read: “Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.” I would not suggest taking on silos as a path toward exceptional client services. However, I wholeheartedly support her guidance, which promotes zippered relationships, allowing us to avoid cross-selling gaps as we orchestrate collaborative selling objectives. Silos emerge for reasons that we need to understand, especially where Wall Street-driven performance metrics and commercialization of our products create onerous metrics for hit rates, profit, loss, and utilization. We must explore ways to incrementally feed these metrics, concurrently exposing colleagues whose breadth of knowledge and desire to grow create mutually beneficial opportunities — opportunities where our collective experiences provide a premium experience for our clients.

Like any dynamic problem, the complexities associated with artfully incentivizing internal and external clients necessitate an elegant approach. I believe that sustained stellar client services starts with a people-centric program management approach, marrying a comprehensive stakeholder assessment with dynamic communication loops throughout the project delivery lifecycle.

Step 1: Understanding and supporting your internal and external clients

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