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Collaborator: Tim Milam President and principal of Jordan and Skala Engineers (Norcross, GA), a firm that has delivered quality engineering services to its clients for more than 65 years.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
M ilam first started with the firm in 1993 when there were only three employees. Since then, he’s helped it to grow to 300. He’s worked in multiple capacities and closely supervised expansion of the company’s design services throughout the years to include low voltage systems (communications, security, and audio/visual systems). He’s a highly respected leader and committed to helping the next generation of engineers. “I’ve witnessed the retirement of three company presidents and growth from 13 to 300 employees,” Milam says. “When a business leader’s exit creates opportunity for others in the organization to lead, you have the structure to succeed. A clear challenge is to promote and cultivate leadership potential in high-performers before an exit occurs (planned or unplanned).” A CONVERSATION WITH TIM MILAM. The Zweig Letter: Your bio on the Jordan and Skala website states you are “committed to developing
younger staff to become the next generation of leading engineers.” Can you provide a few examples of what you and your team are doing to ensure their growth? Tim Milam: Our company employs college students through cooperative education programs (available at most universities that have engineering schools), which is a program I personally benefited from when I was a student at Georgia Tech. The experience exposed me to the building design industry, allowed me to graduate with experience, and afforded me invaluable opportunities to build relationships with business people and mentors. Earning a wage in my college years was also a plus. Since we continually struggle to find qualified people to work in our field, it’s imperative that we develop younger staff in a manner that they’re well engaged in their work and feel confident that they can build a career with our company. Training our younger staff has always been important to us, but our processes for doing so were too inconsistent (in
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUL
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