The “Pace” of business is important. Quickness, speed, and endurance are winning combinations in sports. The same holds true in business. Here are some ways to express it, to challenge ourselves, our teams, and set an example:
Adopt a “decide now” attitude. We don’t often need more time, we just need to decide. “Let’s decide now.” “Why are we waiting on this?”
Reply to relevant emails, texts or calls from clients within hours, not days.
Do “it” now. Get it done. Follow through. Finish.
Set hard deadlines, not goals or suggestions. (We are going to get “XXX” done this week.) Make it visible and be accountable.
Prioritize quickness with revenue-based activities; proposals, sales, executing work, delivering product, following up with clients, fixing problems, removing barriers.
Cut down written and spoken communication to its essentials; direct, clear, candid.
However long we think something might take, seek to cut the time in half (at least.)
Speak it and model it repeatedly: “Come on, let’s go, let’s move, let’s push the communication. Let’s get in front of things. Initiate, move, decide, deliver, focus.”
Some things take time for answers to emerge and need to “percolate.” That’s fine. Keep setting intermediate milestones to analyze, assess signals, etc.
Call time out when needing more clarity or redirection, just like in sports. “Huddle up” for 2, 5, 10 minutes, reset, decide, go.
None of us hit 100% on these, but that’s ok. Keep making the effort. We are better when we do so.
One of the biggest impediments to our personal and professional growth is comfort and slowness. Resist complacency. Growth requires friction, discomfort, struggle.
Life comes at us quickly. The world is dynamic. Train. Stay agile. Be proactive. Set the pace.
Things to Stop Doing – A Professional Outlier’s Perspective
I’ve mostly had the experience in my life of being a bit of an outlier. I didn’t understand it when I was younger, but I do now. It’s not something I contrive or try to make happen, it’s just part of who I am, how I think, and how I interact with the world. At this stage of my life, I am comfortable with it.
So, here’s my view on something we need to STOP Doing.
State boards of professional engineering and architecture need to stop mandating continuing education- professional development hours (PDH) for registered design professionals (PE’s, RA’s and similar.)
Am I against education? No, quite the contrary. The very nature of a “professional” and our work, the statutory compliance requirements, ethics, protection of health and public welfare, certification of documents, education, fundamentally require the constant growth and learning with or without PDH’s.
Being a “professional” implies that we are in a category of self-governance, self-learning, training, and needing to stay “sharp” regardless of mandates. The state rules already provide enough accountability to encourage technical competency.
And if a registrant isn’t committed to it, or the very nature of their work as PE, RA, or other type of licensure is just a title at this stage in their career, then that’s okay. We all still must practice only in our areas of specialty. And if we waver from that, we face the consequence of a potential reprimand, civil and even criminal penalties.
Mandatory Professional Development hours might look good on the surface, but it doesn’t define the value of a design professional and their capability. It doesn’t ensure more quality work.
Most of it in my view is just an extra burden. Find the courses, get the hours, check the boxes.
While I do it and seek to make it work to my advantage, to learn, and to find courses as closely aligned to my field and interest as possible, I wouldn’t do it if it was not required. I don’t need it. I get plenty of real and applicable PDH’s every week, month, year, through the nature of the work, literally.
Plus, apart from Industry-Specific seminars from various companies in the building enclosure and components space, try to find PDH’s on that relevant subject matter through the major online players. You won’t find much.
More compliance is just more burden, less value, less trust in allowing professionals to be who they have chosen to be.
This won’t make it stop, but I had to say it. I’ll bet others in this space may feel the same.
Add a comment…
Randomness, Observations, Experiences
For today, in no particular order or connectivity—just writing from experiences…..
People are better at constructing, building up, and expanding than de-constructing, tearing down, retracting. But sometime life calls for more deletion, simplification, deconstruction. This is true personally and professionally.
When all else is stripped away, the the first priority of any business is survival. It’s not fancy, but survival is 1st. Sell work, do work, bill work, collect for the billed work, profit by spending less than we take in. Being visionary or doing long range planning is a waste of energy if we aren’t dealing with sustainability of delivering excellence over and over and growing outward.
Cash is underrated. We can’t eat (literally) off of equity (unless it’s in land producing food.) We can grow wealth by equity, but we need cash for daily life. Each has its place. Don’t mistake one for the other.
It can be healthy to consider the “least plausible explanation” for an outcome or occurrence. This is threatening to some people, but it can be refreshing to consider.
Conspiracy theories are only such until they aren’t.
Much can be discerned from pattern recognition. This is not really emphasized in most formal educations. Patterns, broken patterns, changing patterns can reveal much. Sometimes we call this “trusting our gut,” but it really isn’t about the gut. It’s about awareness and processing patterns. Don’t discount it.
Everything matters, small or big. So finish it.
Making the bed in the morning really is the start to a more organized and ordered life. It sets in motion a pattern of getting things done, owning the day, developing healthy habits. (We own the bed, the bed doesn’t own us.)
Agility and resilience are key qualities of people, families and businesses that continue to endure in spite of constantly changing circumstances.
Buildings constructed without a qualified Building Envelope Consultant under-perform compared to those constructed with one. This is a key investment that provides a short and long term ROI (return on investment) in better comfort, longevity, aesthetics, capability, reduced risk. The old phrase, “pay now or pay (a lot more) later” applies to this in every instance.
It may sound obvious, but builders, architects, and engineers all have their role in the built world. Don’t confuse one for the other. Engage each according to their value to a project
The Antarctic Ice sheet gained significant mass from 2021 to 2023, reversing the trend of mass loss. This doesn’t make headline news. Look it up. This is not a political statement, just a fact.
Accounts receivable (collecting cash payments for billed services or products) is the hardest part of managing a small private business in B2B world. The “work” of the business is easy. Keeping AR moving is hard unless we can dictate terms 100% of the time, which is not reality. Every client has a different process, platform, payment method, chain of command, etc. Be wise, be sensible, be reasonable, but set boundaries.
Outsourcing anything is a mixed bag; it’s two sides of the same coin. It requires sacrificing some measure of control for convenience. Assess and monitor regularly
That’s it for today. Randomness. I had to get that off my chest. Comment if you choose.
The Suffering Index
Unemployment data for the United States was recently published showing somewhere in the range of 4.1% unemployment. I guess this is supposed to make people feel reasonably positive that 95.9 in 100 people of working age in America have a job. Excellent. But what does it really mean? How does it align with our reality as an individual, a family, a group, town, region, state, area, market, segment, category, industry? What the numbers don’t show is how well people are thriving or how much they may be suffering. So in this analysis and reading of data we must leave room for critical thinking.
Data is data. Macro data has a wide filter. It doesn’t capture the fine stuff. So let’s look deeper; let’s look at what I am calling “the suffering index.”
What is this index? Well, I made it up. It’s a qualitative measure within the unemployment index to assess how well I think people and businesses are doing financially, physically, emotionally, and what they are experiencing in terms of buying power, dissonance, negotiations.
Just because the government publishes a statistic that implies we should feel good, doesn’t mean we should ignore what the eye sees, ears hear, mind captures, checkbook says, buying power creates. Employment is one measure. How well it facilitates life is another measure.
From my observation, my own experience, the business of life, talks with peers, company owners, clients, my adult children, and others, the suffering index has increased steadily the last 2 years. It’s obvious. I am not the only person that sees it this way.
I am grateful to be employed as a business owner and professional. I have some options, I have work. I am not complaining. I am responsible to shape my reality, keep my head up, be resilient, move forward one day at a time. But running the business now compared to prior to all the years prior to 2020 is not the same. Running the business in 2024 vs 2022 is not the same. Change always happens. Regulation is greater. Taxation is higher. Buying power is decreased. Inflation is still not under control (which is a problem created by a government and up to them to solve.) Reluctance to do deals is higher than prior. Commercial building is very slow. People are not returning to offices and will not all do so unless most companies mandate. That is unlikely and would lead to additional shifts, retirements, repurposing.
There’s an old phrase, “figures don’t lie by liars figure.” And another, “If you torture the data long enough it will tell you exactly what you want it to.”
Unemployment measures matter to some degree at the macro level in terms of trending. But I don’t need to see them. It doesn’t matter to anyone other than the government, speculators or trend followers. I prefer to judge reality on my own, based on my observation, experience, and realm of influence.
I know how to suffer well. I can be joyful in lack or in plenty, most of the time. It’s a mindset. I know when suffering is increased or decreased. I know how to be resilient based on long experience in the game of life and business.
But the suffering index is high right now. This is based on what I “feel and see.”
And that’s alright. It’s my index. I have no other data to back it up. It’s based on thousands of inputs over thousands of days.
How are you?
Not Setting Goals – Systems and Process
On the matter of setting goals, this subtle shift in mindset is a profound change in working toward desired results:
Instead of thinking and saying, “It’s my goal to_______________________ (fill in the blank,)” or “I really want to _______________,” replace it with “I am the type of person who does ____________________________ (fill in the blank.)”
Be specific. Actions drive results. Mindset drives actions. To achieve desired results it takes thought, intention, and action. Set a standard. Create an identity, a process, a system, a standard, and execute to it.
Here’s some examples:
Replace: “I really want to lose 15 lbs,” with “I am the kind of person who works out daily and focuses on clean eating and hydration.”
Replace: “I really want a better relationship with my spouse,” with “I am the kind of person who plans and does a weekly date night with my spouse.”
Replace: “We would really like to see the business grow to $5m in revenue,” with “we are the type of people who meet once per week to report scorecards measuring activity in operations, sales, marketing, and client satisfaction, to sustain revenue growth.”
Replace; “We really need to get on top of our spending,” with “I am the kind of person who spends time at my desk tracking expenses daily, maintains a cash flow forecast and balances the checkbook weekly.”
Being a person who sets a standard creates continued improvement toward desired results. Once focused on process and systems, results follow. More energy can then be applied toward new and better outcomes over time. Maintaining to a standard requires less energy than getting there. Plus, it’s easier to calibrate and adjust when we eliminate variables.
I’m the kind of person who likes to share ideas with the world and write, so I maintain and publish a blog.
I am other things too.
So, what kind of person are you?
What I’ve Been Up To – The Big Pivot
No one has heard from me through this blog in over one year. No posts; no updates. It’s not coincidental. It’s a simple case of energy management, focus, other priorities. Much of it has to do with the “big pivot” at our company Wheaton & Sprague Engineering, Inc., http://www.wheatonsprague.com. I know the term “pivot” is overused, but it’s an appropriate description for what we did starting in July 2023. We made a 180 degree turn on our business. This has been the focus since. I’ve learned a lot in life, and one of them is that I’d rather work to “build the thing” (or rebuild) and then talk about it, rather than talk along the way but not really be able to deliver. This is the “talk about it stage.”
Our business from 1994 to 2023 was primarily a specialty engineering company providing delegated design and engineering to the curtain wall and cladding world. We called this our Building Envelope Engineering Division (BEE). Much of this work was for tall buildings with standard or custom aluminum, metal, and glass cladding in major urban centers. It also included other similar work, and we worked with small, medium and large enterprise subcontractors and fabricators in various regions. We still do, but in different form. I’ll come back to that.
We also maintained a consulting group that was primarily comprised of one person for a few years, and then it grew to 2, 3, 4 and then back down, but it was more of a secondary focus for us. We call this our Building Envelope Consulting Division (BEC.) This work covers broad categories of various building types, forms and surfaces, in the major categories of design, construction, forensic investigation and litigation-claim support.
Along the way at times we tried different things like a Building Structures division that provided primary building structural engineering, and a Building Forensics division which merged all of the above and also a quick response team that could handle emergency failure issues. In 2008 the building structures group couldn’t compete on price with other firms doing only that work, and we shut it down. In the forensic work, we couldn’t really focus enough on that business in the required “horizontal niche” and we shut it down.
What had been the consistent, common thread throughout our history from 1994 forward was building envelope engineering work. This work was delivered primarily by providing structural engineering calculations, shop drawings, fabrications drawings, and thermal analysis (later.) We called this “full service engineering work.” Building Envelope Consulting came along in 2008 through a hire we made. This work got traction over time and remained viable but was a smaller percentage of our revenue.
The full service engineering work over the years provided work on large scale projects, big volume of backlog, often with thousands of person-hours involved. This is what we were know for primarily and where we invested most of our energy. Part of it was intention and part of it was just pure, repeat, sustainable work; energy feeding off of itself, like a hurricane gaining energy as it travels across warm ocean waters.
Over time, we increasingly started fighting various market dynamics. One dynamic was an increase in the number of companies providing similar services, mostly in drafting, but some also in engineering. Another was increased price pressure in the drafting services, which became more of a perceived and actual commodity. In addition, some clients self-perform their drafting work. They only go outside their business if they can’t handle the volume or if they can’t provide the competency on certain categories of work. What happens in this instance is we actually end up competing against our clients. They can typically provide the work at a lower cost recovery rate.
As time marched on, pricing pressure increased. The world got “flatter” and more folks came into the space. Then came 2020. Perhaps the reader may remember a thing called COVID-19, the world-wide pandemic. Everything changed in 2020 and the “rebound year” of 2021. Of course, there’s been strategic shifts and cultural changes since, that are still evolving. One of the big changes was “work from home,” or as it is now termed “remote work.” The demand for building occupancy dropped. The demand for occupancy in major urban centers dropped even more. People began working in all sorts of environments, much of it from home. Demand for virtual work and remote tools soared and was met. What was typically an employer’s market prior prior to 2021 became and employee’s market. Once this door opened, major shifts and movements took place with many leaving their jobs and moving to other companies. It seemed almost like an early western expansion land-grab with unprecedented changes. I mention employer and employee in the context of “business owner with equity” vs “non-owner receiving pay and benefits.” It’s not derogatory, it’s mean to make a point. What had always been the realm of the entrepreneur – owner (I can work from anywhere I want at any time if I choose) became just the opposite. The owner was now saddled in the often empty office, working to maintain course and manage the unprecedented dynamics, while staff members were working wherever they chose, and naming their terms. But that’s the topic for another blog.
Nevertheless, in spite of the above, our BEE business chugged along still providing full-service work at various scales. The work in the BEC business chugged along as well, slowly growing from 2, to 3, to 4.
But finally, inevitably, the dynamics mentioned above, and many, many more variables caught up to us and to themselves. The tail of the building market in our categories started to be visible in summer of 2022. Large design and drafting backlogs of full service BEE work slowly dwindled from September of that year forward, primarily led by lower demand, and increased price commoditization. Clients, also faced with declining demand and staff to maintain, had more and more options from which to choose how to procure their design and drawing needs. Major glazed towers in urban centers slowed to a crawl, if not a stop, except most of those that had been started and financed prior. Interest rates rose, commercial loans came due, leases started to expire, companies needed less space. After 29 years providing full service drafting, design and engineering work, we had essentially ZERO backlog in our drafting service line by June 30 of 2023, even though estimated work had stayed steady. Projects were “delayed” or “on indefinite hold” (whatever that really means.)
So, as it came to be, we made the decision to close our drafting service line and kept only our most experienced senior designer on staff to handle the small volume, system design, product development, and BEC support work. It was a tough decision; 29 years of a primary volume-based service with 8 – 16 people in drafting/design at any given time, now having to be dissolved. We spent the entire month of June and July communicating with hundreds of clients in this space, but to no avail. By the end of July 2023 it was shut down.
Professional engineering worked remained less disrupted since it is less of a commodity due to the smaller pool of registered professionals and somewhat more secure pricing paradigms. While volume dropped somewhat, professional engineering licensing will always be required (until it’s all replaced by AI and “rubber stampers” but that’s another blog as well.)
So our business in July of 2023 became half of it’s prior size in BEE. Thus, the pivot starting August 1, 2023. The pivot was to re-focus on building our BEC business as our primary focus, opening ourselves up to broad categories of building types, shapes and sizes, clad with every type of material on the planet. We maintained our BEE business in structural engineering, system design, product development, and thermal analysis service lines, still providing professional engineering work, and providing shop drawing work on small, boutique projects when requested or when the comps appeared to be viable. For all of the last year we’ve been focusing on building the processes, protocols, new client bases, market segments, all of the infrastructure necessary to support the BEC business, consulting engineering, as a B2B scalable business. We are still working in our “vertical” niche of building enclosure work, but in what we call “radical expansion within our niche.” We work with owners, architects, developers, owner’s reps, other consultants, construction managers, lawyers, insurance companies, manufacturers, suppliers, and more. We can provide services for almost any building type, new or existing, with almost any cladding type, and from sub-grade waterproofing to the roof. We have the people, and the diagnostic and testing equipment necessary to support the work. We have the compliance and statutory entities to perform in multiple states. We still provide BEE work, but in different form and lower volume for now. Our process and senior-level people will allow us to scale BEE quickly if and when demand increases. We also do much ‘cross functional work’ between divisions.
With all of the above came a new location, reducing from 12,300 square feet of office space to 3,920 square feet, still with room to spare for staff in office and staff remote. Yes, we too have a hybrid workforce. We can work from any location via remote workers connected to our home base. We can add satellite offices when it makes sense. I don’t see demand for newly built tall urban glazed aluminum facade work coming back any time soon. I see many other building types and categories still being designed and constructed but they have different looks, types, layouts, and are financed in different ways than prior. I see re-glazing projects, energy retrofits, re-purposed buildings with updated cladding systems. I see brick, metal studs, rain screen systems, foundation walls, roofing and elevated horizontal decks and surfaces. I see buildings in need of repair. I see nothing but opportunity ahead in working to solve bigger problems for owners, who have investments in buildings and properties. Buildings that are important assets to their owners and important places of protection to those working or being housed within the walls. But this is just the beginning. There’s so much more, and we place no limits on what the future may look like in the type of work we do.
The phrase “if you build it, they will come,” has been reverberating in my mind as I’ve been writing this and stewarding the process. That may be true in the Field of Dreams, but it’s not completely true in business. We can build it, and people won’t come if they don’t know about it. We need to tell people about it. We need create visibility and awareness. Creating, or supporting this, is what marketing is all about. In addition, we need to do business development, building relationships with people that make decisions, have needs to fulfill and problems to solve. We need to tell the story, to write about it, to let the world know that we’ve built it, and are continuing to build it. Then they will come. Once they do, excellence, care, solving their problems, will keep them coming, staying, working together.
So, welcome to the new Wheaton & Sprague Engineering, AKA Wheaton Sprague Building Envelope and affiliates. Welcome to our new, 30 year old business. We are all about buildings, building enclosures, buildings in all categories. The best is yet to come
With God all things are possible.
Professional Engineer License Procurement-“Rubber Stamp vs. Value”
For those in the construction markets, the built world, and related business, we’ve heard this statement before, “I just need a PE stamp on this project.” It’s such a revealing statement from the buyer.
Purchasing the services of a licensed professional engineer (PE) covers a broad range of value from lesser (“glorified rubber stamp”) to greater (“value added service.”)
The primary responsibility of the licensed engineering professional is to the public; to protect the health and welfare of any person that would use or come in contact with the constructed work. This is a given. The PE also must work to support at least the minimum necessary codified standards of the applicable building code for the project location. Within this context, the client can then receive “the PE stamp and signature” and whatever benefit from the engagement and collaboration as the purchaser of the services.
The “glorified rubber stamp service” is one that meets the minimum standard of being within code while not putting the health and welfare of the public at risk. That’s it. It likely doesn’t engage deeply with, or may not think much about, the client’s needs and value propositions for things like material optimization, cost-to-value ratio, labor savings, and more. It’s more of a “checked box” on the line item. Nothing gained, but maybe something lost. Not many questions asked. Just low cost. Just checked and stamped.
On the other hand, the “value added PE seal,” the one benefiting the client while accomplishing the necessary obligation of the PE, puts “substance” behind the stamp. It’s an expression of the professional’s work. That substance includes a level of thoughtfulness, collaboration, client engagement, interpretation, context, and more. It’s an investment, not just a cost.
To provide appropriate value for the client, the PE stamp on the work product should be saying, “This work product has been delivered in a thoughtful manner, and the expression of the service, relationship, and decisions involved to produce positive outcomes have been validated through this seal and signature.” There should be value received.
What “stamp” are you purchasing?
Go Big or Go Home?
Not really.
Do the work in a way that is natural to the context.
Do what you’re led to do.
Do what the vision inspires.
Not everything is meant to be big or scalable.
If it is, great. If not, no worries.
Stick to the essence of the vision, mission, and value being expressed.
Find your sweet spot.
Enjoy it.
Engineering Services Providers – Selection Criteria
If the low cost professional engineering and consulting services will provide a client the same value as a higher priced cost provider, then by all means, select the low cost option. That’s the best choice. However, this is often not the case. In fact it is almost 100% not the case.
The difference in this category of selecting and purchasing professional services work is the element of interpretive, contextual decisions that impact schedule, materials, labor, and client experience, good or bad. The category of engineering services, the delivery of a professional service manifested in various documented deliverable work products (instruments of services) to a client in the built-world, is both a necessary line item expense and an investment. Why is it an investment? Because it is defining a cost for those subjective, contextual, and interpretive elements. These qualitative elements include categories such as communication, collaboration, client awareness. It also includes quantitative elements (though subject to interpretation) including codified knowledge, material optimization considerations, sequencing, shop and field labor, and more. It’s not a widget that is being purchased as a predefined “hard good.”
I think if clients in the manufacturing, supply, subcontracting, design, contracting, and related markets were made more aware of the differences and values delivered by those of us providing professional services, they could make more informed decisions on the potential cause-effect of their selection and purchase. We do clients a disservice to not explain the nuances between the choices. Conversely, I’ve had the conversations at length with some clients, and even when they acknowledged that they knew they would get a better service that translated into a better outcome, they still chose the low price. We also do our professional services category and peer businesses a disservice to not explain the differences and to compare as if all services are equal. They are not.
If the “low fee” provider will deliver the same scope and positive results, then a client should go with the low fee. If there is something of more value included in the higher fee, then it is up to the provider to define it to the client, make it contextually relevant, and to help facilitate them making the best choice for the specific project. The “right cost” is the cost that is “right in the groove,” no more and no less than it needs to be, for the appropriate results to be achieved. Every dollar spent should yield a return on the investment.
What’s your value proposition?
Resisting Complexity
As a company gets more mature and grows in size, adding people to support the purpose and mission of the business, it also needs to define internal processes and “SOP’s” (standard operating procedures) to reasonably manage with clarity the volume of work; to deliver to clients the work that supports the “why” of the business at more scale .
However, these SOP’s can also become an encumbrance because often times we end up working more and more to serve the internal functions of the business rather than the clients. This is a subtle, gradual, descent, and easy to miss.
To resist, to remain effective, takes consistent resistance by someone, or by a group of “someone’s” to keep asking this question, in perpetuity, “How can we simplify, resist the complex, streamline, and keep “the main thing the main thing” like we did when the business began, which is to focus on simplifying client’s lives and delivering creative solutions to them?”
Do you want to know one way to measure if you’re being too “internally focused?” First, look at your calendar. How many internal meetings are required each week versus how much time to produce the work and connect in a collaborative manner with the client? This is certainly applicable to those with client relationship management (CRM) responsibilities in any measure. But everyone, every role, impacts the client, whether a CRM, accounts payable representative, receptionist, engineer, proposal writer, scheduler, principal, project manager, designer, or other.
It’s all about the client, the customer. It’s all about the delivering the service or product as scoped, and in a manner that makes their experience reasonably positive, and one of relative ease.
We can lose sight of this if we don’t create and maintain awareness and constructive tension in the system.
It’s the responsibility of all of us to remind ourselves and our colleagues to “keep it simple.” And it starts at the top, with the leader of the business.
Build the systems, deliver to the SOP’s, but only if they are supporting the purpose driven mission of the business to the benefit of the client. Cut out everything else.
JOHN L WHEATON BLOG 