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P R O F I L E
Family man: Mark Dillon President and co-founder of ADC Engineering, Inc., a multidisciplinary firm based in Hanaham, South Carolina.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
“C ommoditization is a problem all engineers face,” Dillon says. “We don’t have any pricing strategies. We simply offer fair fees for the scope of work defined and encourage discussion if our fee is higher than expected. There are always comparisons to other firms and other projects and we sometimes lose work due to not offering the lowest fee.” A CONVERSATION WITH MARK DILLON. The Zweig Letter: What are the three to four key business performance indicators that you watch most carefully? Do you share that information with your staff? Mark Dillon: Quarterly, we watch billings as a percentage of salaries, work backlog, and billings compared to past years. The billings, as a percentage, let us know how we are doing relative to meeting overhead and making profit. Month-to-month reports on this are not as informative as
quarterly reporting as you can have an exceptionally low or high month that is not really indicative of the overall health. The backlog trend lets us know the status of work in hand as a multiplier of monthly billings. A healthy backlog gives us confidence for staff retention or hiring. Comparing the backlog to past months and past years is an indicator for future billings. The billing trends let us know if we are progressing toward overall yearly goals and it helps us see positive or negative trends. We share financial information with senior staff partnership and department heads, but not with the overall company staff. We feel it’s important that the staff has confidence in the company’s financial health, so we hold monthly meetings where the staff hears from each department about upcoming and current projects. TZL: How far into the future are you able to reliably predict your workload and cashflow?
THE ZWEIG LETTER Aug
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