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ON THE MOVE SEVEN STAFF MEMBERS BECOME SANBORN HEAD SHAREHOLDERS Sanborn Head has announced seven new shareholders in the firm. “By purchasing Sanborn Head stock, these leaders are investing in their own careers,” said Barret Cole, President and Chief Operating Officer. “They are also investing in the future success of the company.” Russell Abell, P.G., LSP, leads Sanborn Head’s Industrial practice area. His work specializes in contaminant hydrogeology, contaminant fate and transport including chlorinated volatile organics, petroleum VOCs, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, litigation support, and transactional due diligence. Sarah Dolcino, MBA, is the Director of Administrative Services. She oversees corporate communications and training programs and is the manager of the firm’s Concord, New Hampshire, office.
Mary Beth Dopfer, CPA, MBA, is Sanborn Head’s Vice President of Finance. She also leads the firm’s human resources and information technology. Scott Nerney, P.E., practices environmental site characterization and remediation as a member of our Industrial group. He has extensive experience with Superfund and Brownfields properties. Scott also heads up the firm’s Health & Safety programs. Tim Reed, P.E., CPESC, works on engineering and permitting in our Solid Waste practice area. He specializes in landfill and site/ civil construction, and as the CAD Services Manager for the firm, Reed has particular expertise in the use of computer aided design software. Jennifer Sanborn, P.E., practices environmental engineering and hydrogeological consulting
in our Industrial practice area. She specializes in vapor intrusion investigation and mitigation, contaminant hydrogeology, emerging contaminants, and the Brownfields program. Stephen Zemba, Ph.D., P.E., is amember of our Industrial practice area. He provides consulting and expert witness services on health risk assessment from environmental contaminants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and teaches classes in air quality assessment. Sanborn Head is an engineering and technical consulting firm serving a broad array of private, public and institutional clients in the development, energy, industrial, and solid waste markets. Our multi-disciplinary team of engineers and scientists specializes in integrating our core expertise in earth, energy, and environment to deliver innovative, yet practical solutions to our clients.
HOBSON HOGAN, from page 9
stacking up, orders languishing on the factory floor, and cramped warehouse space. Managers of AEC firms have no such physical indicators; they need to create systems to warn themselves of issues. When times are lean, banks force firms to become efficient by limiting credit; however, when times are good credit is used as a crutch, masking the fact effort is not being turned into cash. This is not just for looking at your administrative functions; it is really for business planning and decision- making. Could you imagine GM or Boeing budgeting for next year without any consideration for the capacity of their factories? I cannot, but architects and engineers do it every year. “How much more revenue did we have last year? $10 million? Great, how about $12 million this year. Next item on the agenda, corporate Holiday Cards.” No thought or consideration is given to how you produce the projects that generate the revenue. You can kill your cash flow by haphazardly adding work. Plan your production process poorly – congratulations, you killed your firm’s value by increasing revenue. You think I am kidding, but I am not. The fact of the matter is that this is conceptually easy, but hard in practice. You may not be able to work faster like our anchor example, though you may have plenty of waste in your firm that can be dumped to increase the speed in which you convert effort into cash. Focusing on cash flow requires you to change how you think about which projects to pursue, how to do work, how to bill – essentially the entire business. Managers of AEC firms ultimately run a production process. Ignore the factory at your own peril. HOBSON HOGAN is an investment banker and consultant with Continuum Advisory Group. He can be reached at hhogan@ continuumag.com.
not simply talking about getting your clients to pay more quickly; I am talking about focusing on increasing the speed at which you turn your firm’s efforts into cash. This mindset leads you to be more efficient in how you deploy your firm’s resources, and constantly strive to increase the efficiency at which you do your work. “Focusing on cash flow requires you to change how you think about which projects to pursue, how to do work, how to bill – essentially the entire business. Managers of AEC firms ultimately run a production process. Ignore the factory at your own peril.” Architects and engineers live in a world of professional service, which deludes them into thinking that they are detached from the world that is occupied by purveyors of tangible goods. Wrong! Let me tell you, it’s no different. Think about your architecture or engineering firm as a factory that produces concrete anchors. Your architects and engineers are the machines that produce the anchors and the projects are the anchors themselves. The longer the machines take to create the anchors, the more work in process you have on hand. As sales grow, you have to invest more cash into anchors that are being made, money that could be spent elsewhere. As revenue increases, your A/R grows and more of your money is tied up as a client’s IOU rather than as cash in the bank. Conversely, the faster you produce anchors, WIP decreases and cash flow increases. It is not just factories that work this way; this applies to an AEC firm. It is frankly easier for a factory manager to look out at her factory floor and see problems. Physical product that is
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THE ZWEIG LETTER March 4, 2019, ISSUE 1286
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