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City Springs retail, Sandy Springs, GA.
Conference call: Ellen Long President of Long Engineering, Inc. (Hot Firm # 24 for 2017), a 90-person land surveying and civil engineering firm based in Atlanta, Georgia.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“B egin to identify internally if you have poten- tial owners you can mentor, and enable them to be financially capable to invest in the transi- tion,” Long says. “In our opinion, it takes eight to 10 years to fully transition leadership and owner- ship. If you don’t have any options, you may have to consider an acquisition route.” A CONVERSATION WITH ELLEN LONG. The Zweig Letter: They say failure is a great teacher. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way? Ellen Long: Don’t hire the wrong people in critical roles and if you do, fix the situation quickly. TZL: There are A/E leaders who say profit centers create corrosive internal competition for firm re- sources. What’s your opinion on profit centers? EL: We’ve found that it works well for us. We use it to measure performance and profitability and
where we would like to grow or focus our available resources. Typically, firm resources are not inter- mingled between divisions. Decisions are made on the performance of a profit center and its ability to support growth and expansion, which requires ac- curate and separate financial tracking. TZL: What’s your policy on sharing the firm’s fi- nancials with your staff? Weekly, monthly, quar- terly, annually? And how far down into the org chart is financial information shared? EL: All employees have access to project-related fi- nancial information at any time through our Del- tek Vision project and financial management soft- ware, which gives real-time data on all projects, job- to-date cost amount invoiced, and individuals who bill to the project. The company’s monthly and an- nual financial statements (i.e. profit and loss state- ments) are open to division managers and above. TZL: The design-build delivery model appears
Ellen Long, President, Long Engi- neering, Inc.
THE ZWEIG LETTER Jun
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