8
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE, from page 7
South Halstead Street Bridge in Chicago (first modern vertical lift bridge, built in 1894), the Arroyo Seco Bridge in Pasadena (first major reinforced concrete bridge in the U.S., built in 1913), the Goethals Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing (the Port Authority of NY/NJ’s first major bridges, built in the late 1920s), the Lewiston – Queenston Bridge in Niagara Falls (longest steel arch bridge at the time of construction in 1962), the Roslyn Viaduct Bridge on Long Island (New York state’s first segmental bridge, constructed in 2010), and the dual-use (highway and rail) Sarah Long Bridge in Maine (first vertical lift bridge in the U.S. to utilize post-tensioned segmental concrete towers, completed in 2018) to name a few. One specialty area within bridge engineering where H&H has substantially impacted the engineering world is movable bridges. For well over a century, we’ve been the world’s leader in movable bridge engineering and have pioneered designs for every major type of movable bridge. The numerous bridge engineering patents held by H&H through the decades includes important movable bridge patents such as the Hanover Skew Bascule Design. With more than 30 movable bridge replacement designs in the U.S. and internationally and well over 100 movable bridge rehabilitations in the past five years alone, H&H possesses more expertise and contributes more to the movable bridge engineering community than any other firm in the world. TZL: Research shows that PMs are overworked, understaffed and that many firms do not have formal training programs for PMs. What is your firm doing to support its PMs? SB: Project managers certainly have a lot on their plate, and sometimes too much. Our approach to addressing this is twofold. We’ve established a dedicated PM Support Team and are actively training and developing deputy PMs and new PMs to take off some of the load. Our PM Support Team is led by our COO and CFO and includes resource managers and operations personnel. Collectively, they support our PMs by helping to assess project status, inputting required information into our project management system, tracking budgets, assessing resource needs and providing staff, working with our accounting department to submit change orders and other activities that lighten the burden on our PMs while helping them be more successful. We also have a formal PM training program consisting of both internal and external instructors, including classroom type lessons, roundtable discussions, and group workshops. Our training program starts with a basic introductory PM bootcamp training program and progresses to higher levels of PM education. Depending on training completed and actual project experience, our PMs are classified following a three-level system that we use to assign PMs and deputy PMs to projects. Increased experience, demonstrated success, and completion of further training is required for a PM to advance to higher levels within our PM classification system. By continually developing more qualified PMs and deputy PMs in concert with providing them with a support team, we are better able to manage the workload of our PMs, even as we continue to grow our firm aggressively.
to work on a variety of assignments and for a variety of managers. And finally, we are committed to continually expanding our ownership and giving opportunities to those high-achieving employees showing dedication to the company to be part of our ownership team. TZL: Ownership transition can be tricky, to say the least. What’s the key to ensuring a smooth passing of the baton? What’s the biggest pitfall to avoid? SB: Ownership transition is a priority focus. In fact, we’ve expanded the number of firm owners by a factor of 10 in the past eight years for this very reason. One thing that we’ve done to ensure the proper transition is to develop a detailed five- and 10-year ownership plan that is updated every year. This plan identifies potential owners as well as intended overall and individual ownership levels that will achieve our ownership transition goals. We also look forward and plan for funding ownership retirements through retained earnings phased buyouts. Some other elements of our ownership transition plan include facilitating and subsidizing ownership purchases of new owners, limiting the maximum ownership any one individual can hold (we’re at 10 percent), and requiring the sale of ownership at a certain age. The biggest pitfall to avoid is not planning for ownership transition well before high-level owners are ready to retire. This situation almost always leads to selling the firm. TZL: They say failure is a great teacher. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way? SB: I’ve certainly had my share of lessons learned the hard way. I think something valuable that I’ve learned is the importance of putting the right people in the right position for success. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and aligning responsibilities with strengths is crucial, especially at the highest positions. Roles and responsibilities need to be based on capabilities and willingness to do what it takes for success, and not based on tenure, emotions, personal friendships, or the like. And, not everyone can be trained to do any job well. Having the wrong individual in a leadership or other key role only creates more work for others, typically for those who already have too much on their shoulders and puts pressure up and down the organization. And I’ve learned that a “team-first” attitude and strong people skills are crucial for our leadership team. Addressing high-level performance issues isn’t easy, and they don’t go away on their own, so the best way to do it is to address it head-on as soon as you are aware of the problem. TZL: How do you think Hardesty & Hanover has shaped global engineering? What’s been its greatest impact? SB: H&H has been home to some of the most impactful bridge engineering pioneers in the country and the world. We’ve been on the forefront of complex highway and rail bridge design innovation throughout our history, which has produced landmark and record-setting bridges, many of which are more than 100 years old and still in service today. Examples of such landmark structures include the
© Copyright 2021. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 26, 2021, ISSUE 1389
Made with FlippingBook Annual report