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Trusted advisor: Brian Darrow President and CEO of Blueline (Kirkland, WA), a firm that’s committed to building relationships, enhancing communities, and improving lives.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
D arrow is one of Blueline’s founding principals. While he’s best known for his urban infill expertise with hundreds of projects in the cities of Seattle and Kirkland alone, he’s recently shifted his focus away from project- related work to company operations as the business launches its latest strategic business plan. “The trusted advisor is the person clients call first even before an idea turns into a real project; the person clients call first to bounce ideas off even if they know it’s outside of our area of expertise,” Darrow says. “We get there with our clients by always being honest and always doing what we say we are going to do. We get there by forming strong relationships in the jurisdictions where their projects are located. We get there because we know something about their families. And we get there because, for the most part, we genuinely just like hanging out with them.” A CONVERSATION WITH BRIAN DARROW. The Zweig Letter: Under your leadership, Blueline has consistently been named one of the Best Places to Work
in several business and industry publications. To what do you most attribute that recognition? Brian Darrow: Blueline was first named a “Best Place to Work” in 2007 because we’ve always known that our employees are our most valuable asset and have treated them as such. Our mission statement is, “To build people. To build relationships. To build communities,” and when we talk about building people, we’re referring to our employees. In the last few years alone, Blueline added three key leaders to our ownership group, developed professional development plans for each employee, created an extensive internal training program for our employees, reorganized the company organizational chart to help accomplish more of Blueline’s overall goals as well as staff’s individual career goals, and we formed a board of directors to provide outside council to continue steering our efforts in the right direction. Our owners believe that employee satisfaction and retention is the key to our ongoing success and unique
THE ZWEIG LETTER MA
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