Leading for a change
At David Evans and Associates flexibility is paramount, but so
is planning for the future.
By Christina Williams
Back in the very early days of David Evans and Associates, the
land use planning and engineering firm worked out a plan for a
residential development in the small city of Durham.
“The site was a magnificent 70 acres of trees,”
says David Evans, chairman of the 30-year-old firm, recalling
the 1976 project, a development called Kingsgate. A mature fir
forest, abandoned nursery stock and a small filbert orchard
made up the diverse population. Before planning the
development, DEA surveyors mapped out all the trees and fit the
residential site plans, a total of 260 units, to keep as many
of the trees as possible.
“I made a lot of builders mad when I said their house
plan would not fit on the lot because of the trees,”
Evans says.
Kingsgate, near the new Bridgeport Village shopping center
between Tigard and Tualatin, is a fitting metaphor for the
corporate leadership at DEA. It illustrates the need for
careful planning, connecting the past to the future and
preserving vital attributes.
Like many Oregon companies, David Evans and Associates (the
No. 8 Large Company on the 2006 100 Best Companies to Work for
in Oregon list) has wrestled with its own growth. What started
with two guys and two desks in 1976 has ballooned into a
nationwide firm with 20 offices and 850 employees. The
firm’s expertise has diversified beyond land planning
into services around transportation engineering, water
resources and energy services. The growth, happening in fits
and starts that match economic cycles, came with acquisitions
— some 20 of them — and a steady stream of new
hires. And officials say DEA has been profitable every year
save one: 1982, when interest rates shot up and development
work all but shut down.
Ask Evans, the 67-year-old chairman of the firm, to what he
attributes such a strong track record and the plainspoken civil
engineer says, “We hire great professionals and we try to
let them do what they can do well.” Then he admits,
“It gets more complicated as you get larger.”
EVANS DESCRIBES HIS COMPANY as a collection of little firms
— individual offices that generally have their own areas
of expertise — that can act like a big firm when the
project calls for it, as it does, for example, with current
jobs with the Manhattan Transportation Authority and
re-engineering the I-5 Columbia River crossing.
But in addition to pulling together on the occasional project,
DEA offices are expected to adhere to what is essentially the
company mission statement, says Evans. Abiding by a stated core
purpose (“to improve the quality of life while
demonstrating stewardship for the built and natural
environments”) and a set of seven core values (attributes
such as honesty, involvement, entrepreneurial spirit and
financial security) allows for company culture to vary some
from office to office without any erosion of overall
quality.
“It’s not a cookie-cutter company,” says
Cindi Chandler, senior vice president and director of human
resources, who joined DEA just over three years ago after
stints with Shilo Inns and Banfield Pet Hospital. “We
don’t even own one.”
In addition to sharing core ideals, DEA workers also share
ownership in the company. Through an employee stock ownership
plan, employees of every level have the opportunity to own
stock, either by purchasing the shares outright or acquiring
them via a company match in the 401(k) plan. As a result,
employees own nearly 50% of the company, with closer to 20% in
the hands of the founder.
“The ESOP is one part of a culture that is very much
involving of the employees,” Chandler says.
“Employees act like owners. They’re very
entitled.”
Through employee surveys, the company is constantly gauging
employee satisfaction and getting worker input on policies and
benefits. Chandler says plans to replace the vacation and sick
leave policy with a single pot of paid-time-off days were
ditched when it became clear that employees wanted to keep the
distinction between sick time and vacation time.
A new initiative, DEA University, will also involve employees
in ongoing training in classes on topics including business
development and situational leadership. Such training is
important for a company filled with engineers who have strong
technical training but sometimes lack the so-called soft skills
that are often taught in business programs. Chandler points out
that it’s also important for DEA as a company without an
organizational chart and with relatively few levels of
management.
“How do you help people continue to grow when
we’re so flat and there aren’t 20 promotions
waiting for them?” she asks. “This training is a
leverage point.”
AT A FIRM THAT HAD A HAND IN planning such developments as
Central Oregon’s Sunriver, Portland’s RiverPlace,
Pioneer Place and Forest Heights and Bend’s Broken Top
Resort, it should come as no surprise that plans for
transitions in leadership have been carefully considered and
mapped out well in advance.
Last year, Evans walked away from the CEO title, appointing
Ken Wightman, a 20-year veteran of the company, to take his
place. Considering it was the first time Evans had given up the
controls at the company he founded, the change was met with
little fanfare.
In part, the smooth transition was rooted in the fact that
Evans made it very clear that Wightman would be taking over and
involved him in decisions prior to the shift.
“It’s almost a non-event,” says Wightman,
who is 60. He’ll be a different CEO than Evans was,
Wightman acknowledges. He’s more hands-on when it comes
to people. But his attention is directed forward to the next
transition. “The focus now is on building the
company’s leadership bench. We’re working on ways
to get them involved.”
Evans and Wightman have already lined up the next top
executives for DEA. Al Barkouli, the Portland office manager,
and Dave Moyano, who heads up the Salem office, have been
tapped for the roles that Wightman and Evans play now with a
target takeover date somewhere around 2010.
Barkouli, a native of Libya who joined DEA in 1988 as a young
engineer, says he’s worked with the leadership team to
assess what his strengths are and how they will be tapped most
effectively in his upcoming role. “I’m already
thinking about my successors,” he says.
“You’re looking at the next generation and the
next. Great people don’t grow on trees. You help people
become great.”
The looking ahead doesn’t stop there. Daniel Heagerty,
senior vice president in charge of strategic planning,
regularly picks the brains of a cadre of future leaders, about
10 of them in each of the firm’s major offices. “I
didn’t want to leave strategic planning just to the
gray-hairs,” says Heagerty, who has two college-aged
children.
Heagerty periodically asks his future leaders: “Define
the company you want to work for 10 years from now.” The
answers he gets help him form the company’s strategy,
which is moving in new directions — toward renewable
energy services, toward a design-build business that will keep
DEA more involved in all phases of the projects it works on and
toward more interaction between different divisions.
“Ultimately, we’re creating a whole new approach
to the issues we’re having to face,” Heagerty says.
“We’re getting further upstream and getting our
clients to swim further upstream. The environment is creative
tension, stretching that rubber band but not breaking it. You
want people to maximize their creativity by truly challenging
different disciplines to work together.”
AT DEA HEADQUARTERS, an eight-story building at the edge of
the Willamette in Portland’s RiverPlace district, the
atmosphere is charged with change. Employees spend their time
thinking and talking about projects that will alter maps and
change the face of communities. Clients come and go with
armloads of blueprints.
For all their planning, the measure of successful leadership
for the company as it matures will be maintaining the agility
to keep up with the demands of the marketplace and to keep
paces ahead of industry trends.
Bob Ames, former vice chairman of First Interstate Bank and a
DEA board member since Evans added outside advisers to the
board of directors in 1991, says keeping up and keeping ahead
is one of the firm’s strengths. “Maintaining that
edge is not inexpensive,” Ames says. “It’s a
doggone effectively managed company.”
Planning around the trees in Kingsgate was one of Evans’
first projects and it set the tone for a firm that has grown up
around values that were employed there — sustainability
and creativity with an eye on the bottom line. Involving future
generations of engineers in plotting a course for the business,
Evans hopes the company with his name on the front door will be
around long after he’s gone.
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