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P R O F I L E
Team members with Hargrove Engineers + Constructors at a carbon dioxide capture and storage plant.
A culture of success Powered by founding principles, an Alabama engineering firm has emerged as a national player in petroleum, life sciences, and paper products.
By RICHARD MASSEY Managing Editor
cent growth trajectory has garnered the headlines, Hargrove says the die was cast back in 1995, when the company and its culture – based on total com- mitment to the client – were founded. “If you keep supporting your clients, they’ll force your hand and ask you to do more,” Hargrove says. The company culture also has an enduring in- ternal piece – commitment to the team. An employee-owned firm, part of the mission is to put food on the table for its people and the communi- ties in which it works. “We care about each other and have compassion,” Hargrove says. “When we compete [for contracts], we compete for each other’s families.” For good reason, the focus on company culture revolves around the titans of today’s economy – Google, Twitter, Facebook, Southwest Airlines, and Progressive Insurance. Magazines like Forbes , En- trepreneur , Business Insider , and Inc. have all writ- ten about it, too. But Hargrove has its own brand, perhaps a bit more old fashioned, and over the last 20 years, it’s only strengthened. See HARGROVE, page 4
C ompany culture can do wonders for an A/E/P firm. It can outlast a downturn, ensure a recov- ery, trigger a boom in business development, and attract the best and brightest. Indeed, company culture is a multifaceted thing. One of the great advocates of company culture, and a beneficiary of its many virtues, is Ralph A. Har- grove, founder, president, and CEO of Hargrove Engineers + Constructors (Mobile, AL), now the largest engineering firm in Alabama, and, accord- ing to Engineering News Record , the 90th largest in the United States. In the last five years, Hargrove has made its push, graduating from a regional firm on the Gulf Coast to a national firm with 11 offices in six states and a workforce of more than 1,200 people. While the re- “We care about each other and have compassion. When we compete [for contracts], we compete for each other’s families.”
THE ZWEIG LETTER February 15, 2016, ISSUE 1139
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