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TZL: What has your firm done recently to upgrade its IT system? BO: We’ve offloaded some of our IT functions to the cloud and continue to improve our resiliency and disaster recov- ery features. TZL: What’s the best way to recruit and retain top talent in a tight labor market? BO: To have a culture that provides a great deal of freedom to allow people to grow, learn and have some fun along the way. From that you build a reputation that becomes attrac- tive to support both retention and recruitment. TZL: What’s the key benefit you give to your employees? Flex schedule, incentive compensation, 401(k), etc.? BO: We have a flex-time schedule, a combination of a bonus and profit-sharing program, and a 401(k) program. We’re competitive and believe in the industry. TZL: How do you raise capital? BO: This isn’t an issue for our firm as our parent company provides growth capital. TZL: What’s your preferred strategy for growth, M&A or organic? Give us a synopsis of how your firm effected growth in the recent past. BO: A combination of organic and acquisition growth. We’ve been able to achieve greater than 10 percent organic growth over the past few years due, in part, to our market- based organizational structure. This has infused a greater business sense internally and recognizes that clients hire us for our expertise in chosen industry verticals. They see us as specialists, not generalists. We’ve also acquired firms recently to help us grow into new vertical markets such as rail and transit and into new services such as medical equip- ment planning. TZL: What’s the greatest challenge presented by growth? BO: For our employees to understand who we are and where we are going as we grow into more geographies and more markets and services. People tend to only recognize and few years due, in part, to our market- based organizational structure. This has infused a greater business sense internally and recognizes that clients hire us for our expertise in chosen industry verticals.” “We’ve been able to achieve greater than 10 percent organic growth over the past

This helps provide the diversity that we need regarding per- spectives, especially when we consider investments in new services or expanding on the synergies that exist across our present markets/divisions/services. “We grow and hire great people who are individuals that understand a ‘client-first and client-service’approach. This allows us to build relationships with our clients that then translates to a great reputation built upon that philosophy and back-stopped by great engineering.” TZL: Is there a secret to effective ownership transition? BO: We are privately held with the majority of our owner- ship in the hands of our parent company. So a slightly dif- ferent question could be more along the lines of leadership transition which we are presently doing. And the “secret sauce” is simply trust and communication which translates to a good partnership that supports the transition. TZL: How do you go about winning work? BO: We grow and hire great people who are individuals that understand a “client-first and client-service” approach. This allows us to build relationships with our clients that then translates to a great reputation built upon that philosophy and back-stopped by great engineering. When you have this woven into your firm’s culture and you execute it to the best of your ability on a regular basis, you are in the best possible position to win work. TZL: What’s the greatest problem to overcome in the pro- posal process? BO: Having a clear understanding of exactly what the cli- ent’s real problems are to solve, and then being able to artic- ulate that understanding in a meaningful, yet concise way. TZL: Once you’ve won a contract, what are the “marching orders” for your PMs? BO: The expectations of our PMs is to follow our PM man- ual which delineates some of the basic Xs and Os of kicking a project off. TZL: How does marketing contribute to your success rate? Are you content with your marketing efforts, or do you think you should increase/decrease marketing? BO: Marketing is a support function to business develop- ment and we’ve organized our marketing staff to align with our market verticals. This contributes to good communica- tion and leads to better support materials. As we continue to grow, we’ve added marketing staff to help support that growth.

See CONFERENCE CALL, page 8

gust 7, 2017, ISSUE 1211

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