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dGardner

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DG: Get people who want to participate and who are active- ly involved, not just by seniority, title, or office staff size. It’s also important to mix younger generation owners with more experienced ones. I prefer to avoid domineering per- sonality types who run roughshod over the group. Include outside board members. They bring a different perspective to the discussion and are less influenced by internal politics. Outside members can act like guests at a dinner table – they keep the rest of the family on good behavior. I also believe that the board should be strategic, not opera- tional. Move day-to-day operational tasks to an executive committee consisting of three to four board or non-board members to review operational requirements. Our board membership changes periodically, but there’s no set term limit. We used to elect board members every year, but we’ve moved to a staggered board, with one-third of members elected every year for a three-year term (with no term limits). We’ve had good luck with outside board members who were once our clients or business associates. We’ve also had sev- eral retired senior management architectural clients as board members. Finally, don’t put your lawyer or banker on the board. They already give you advice. Pay them when you need them. “All of our engineers are encouraged to develop and foster client relationships. They’re supported by our team of marketing and business development professional.” TZL: Is there a secret to effective ownership transition? DG: Start early and have a plan. Coffman was started with the idea of a legacy company, with an orderly transition to the next generation. No one person has ever owned more than 40 percent of the shares. Our by-laws require all share- holders to begin selling their shares by age 60 and be fully divested by age 66-and-a-half. This doesn’t mean they must retire, but they can no longer be a shareholder. We didn’t want to get to the point where we had a bunch of original founders in their 70s and not have the means to financially buy out their equity. Many financial and personnel surprises are eliminated when we know the timeline for shareholders selling shares and when new shareholders will be needed. After nearly 40 years in business, our founder is fully bought out, and the largest shareholder owns about 7 percent. Every sharehold- er has access to all company financials. We try to be as trans- parent as possible TZL: How do you go about winning work?

DG: Nearly 80 percent of our work is from repeat clients, so keeping existing clients is important. We also track clients’ future needs. It gives us a longer lead time to prepare before the official notice hits the general public. The more intel we gather, the more specific our proposal. You have to be pro- active. Engineering is also a relationship-based business. All of our engineers are encouraged to develop and foster client relationships. They’re supported by our team of marketing and business development professionals, who primarily fo- cus on developing relationships with clients and preparing proposals to win work for their local offices. Our marketing team strategically responds to qualification-based requests (i.e. responding to RFPs, rosters, and owner requests for in- formation), that align with their local office goals and meet client expectations. TZL: What’s the greatest problem to overcome in the pro- posal process? DG: To write each proposal in a way that addresses the spe- cific needs of the client. Too often, proposals are all about the consultant, serving as a “look at me” advertisement. We try to turn this around and specifically address how our ex- perience can help the client. We constantly strive to focus our proposals on the benefits of working with Coffman as opposed to the features Coffman brings to the table. We have more success with proposals when we describe how our engineering solutions help make our client’s jobs easier. TZL: Once you’ve won a contract, what are the “marching orders” for your PMs? DG: First, we schedule a kick-off meeting with everyone in- volved with the project to confirm and clarify scope, sched- ule, and expectations. “Everyone” means the entire team. This includes project managers, engineers, designers, field personnel, etc. Everyone may not have full access to the to- tal budget numbers, but they should know their portion of the budget. The scope is fully explained so everyone recognizes the im- pact of changes on the project. This helps eliminate scope creep. The schedule is then fully developed and generally in- cludes: ❚ ❚ Milestone submittal dates ❚ ❚ Model/background “lock-down” dates ❚ ❚ Internal review time budgeted for peer and principal review ❚ ❚ Incorporating changes due to Q/C reviews ❚ ❚ Printing and final check prior to delivery client The budget, based on effort, is developed by submittal phase and by discipline. The budget is tracked based on earned value. It’s critical to communicate the remaining budget to every team member in a timely fashion so there’s time for See CONFERENCE CALL, page 8

uly 17, 2017, ISSUE 1208

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