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PROFILE
Visionary: Jon Williams President and CEO of W&A Engineering (Athens, GA), a growing multidisciplinary engineering firm known for its innovative design, efficient engineering, and professional service.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
F ounded by Williams in 1999, W&A Engineering (Athens, GA), formerly Williams & Associates, has grown from a one-person operation into a diverse company with five core departments: civil engineering, land surveying, landscape architecture, traffic engineering, and economic development. Municipal services and planning and development consulting round it all out. W&A Engineering is a Better Communities Collaborative company – a family of innovative businesses with the unified mission to work toward a better tomorrow. This common thread is woven into the fabric of its affiliate companies and is the “why” with which its teams approach each and every opportunity. “I get to set the course for where BCC is heading, not only as a business, but for our employees and how we will impact our communities,” Williams says. “It’s a fantastic job! It can be challenging, and as with anything there are trials and errors and lessons learned, but the reward is huge.” A CONVERSATION WITH JON WILLIAMS. The Zweig Letter: In 2022, your firm was a recipient of Zweig
Group’s Best Firm To Work For award. To what do you most attribute that? Jon Williams: Our people, from the leadership team down. They believe in our mission of “Building Better Communities,” which for us starts with focus on our employees and the things that make them want to come to work every day. TZL: What about the Better Communities Collaborative excites you most? JW: The fact that our employees come to work every day knowing they have an opportunity to build better communities, and our holistic focus on making our employees “net better off.” I can’t take credit for this research, but the gist of it is that for employees to be “net better off” they must be fulfilled in six areas: emotional/mental, relational, physical, financial, purposeful, and employable. We are very intentional about our focus on each of these areas for our employees. TZL: Are there any key challenges in working with such a business model? If so, what are they and how do you rise to meet those challenges?
THE ZWEIG LETTER JAN
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