Click Here for Part 1

A 100% employee owned firm providing engineering solutions for all kinds of development projects

Terry Neimeyer is the CEO and chairman of the board of KCI Technologies. Founded in 1955, KCI Technologies is a leading architectural, engineering, consulting, and construction firm that serves state and local governmental agencies, as well as institutions and private companies, across the United States. The company is completely owned and operated by its employees, who number over 1000 personnel. In recognizing KCI’s revenues and quality of service, Engineering News-Record Magazine has ranked the company 77th among the country’s top engineering firms.

You reorganized the company in a fundamental way in 2011. Can you tell us more about that decision and the factors leading up to it?

TERRY NEIMEYER: Up through 2011, KCI was organized by profit centers and those profit centers were geographically based. So if we had an office in Harrisburg it had a profit and loss statement. Our office in Morgantown, West Virginia, had a profit-loss statement. These geographies proved to be very successful to a degree but we were trying to cross sell our services in a variety of areas—be it transportation or environmental, resource management or construction services—and as long as we were organized geographically we found our growth was limited to the potential of the office manager. If the office manager was interested in Business X, it would grow in that business, but the other businesses wouldn’t grow.

We made a decision in 2011 to organize more based upon our customers—our customers then would be a transportation customer, a construction services customer, an environmental services, resource management customer—and in doing so, it helped us have our outer offices grow in more than one discipline without having to only have the office manager be the growth engine. That growth engine has an office manager, who will always be confined to that individual’s expertise. If he was a traffic engineer, we grew in traffic, but we’d never grow in bridges; we’d never grow in environmental services. We’d reorganized into six operating disciplines in 2011 to mimic our customers and have seen appreciable growth associated with that where we’ve removed the geographic boundaries and allowed our branch offices to grow in a multi-discipline mode instead of in a singular focus mode.

What kinds of training programs do you run at KCI?

We always found that we were losing people right when they got to the four-year longevity range. They were looking for something else. We at KCI decided that we had to find a way to offer them something that would enhance their careers but would also enhance their personal lives, and so we established an Emerging Leaders program, which is a program strictly for zero to five-year employees that would teach them soft side skills that you wouldn’t learn in college in an engineering curriculum. When you go to college in engineering, you’re learning engineering. You don’t get dispute resolution or time management. So, we created a curriculum that had this emerging leaders group do conflict resolution, time management, negotiation skills. We offered this training to people to have them learn something that helps the business, helps them personally, and retains them. We put them through this program and then at the end of the program, they have to do a project that happens to be a project that they think would benefit the company.

We’ve done everything from another program called Technology Refresh—and that was a program that the Emerging Leaders group came up with that said, “Once a computer gets to three years old, it should be replaced.” It doesn’t have to be replaced exactly at three, but somewhere between three and four: don’t have old machines. Then again, we engineers use computers like we use cars; if they’re not broke just keep operating them. And lo and behold, Microsoft would come out with a new software, and if you had old computers it wouldn’t work on it. So, this Technology Refresh program forces us to refresh our technology every three to four years so that no one would have an older computer. In this day of technology, speed is what it’s all about. Lo and behold, an older computer doesn’t have that speed, so we created that program.

We then created another program called Professional Leaders. Professional Leaders was a program for five- to 15-year employees, where we teach them some soft side skills but then business skills: how to manage a KCI profit and loss statement, how to collect a receivable from an unreasonable client, how to do specific things to our business.

We just had a group come back from a leadership experience, which just started this year and where they go to Gettysburg and they learn leadership on the battlefield of Gettysburg, both from the Confederate side and the Union side. I rode the elevator with a guy yesterday who told me about how great it was. I was telling him, “I wanted to go on that and I was hoping one of you guys would cancel so that I could go because I heard great things.” That’s why we implement it in our company. But leadership from a Civil War perspective taught our people a whole lot about what goes into leading people and they’re truly appreciative. That’s our Emerging Leaders program.

ABOUT OFFIT KURMAN

Offit Kurman is one of the fastest-growing, full-service law firms in the Mid-Atlantic region. With 120 attorneys offering a comprehensive range of services in virtually every legal category, the firm is well positioned to meet the needs of dynamic businesses and the people who own and operate them. Our eight offices serve individual and corporate clients in the Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Northern Virginia markets, as well as the Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City metropolitan areas. At Offit Kurman, we are our clients’ most trusted legal advisors, professionals who help maximize and protect business value and personal wealth. In every interaction, we consistently maintain our clients’ confidence by remaining focused on furthering their objectives and achieving their goals in an efficient manner. Trust, knowledge, confidence—in a partner, that’s perfect.

You can connect with Offit Kurman via our Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn pages. You can also sign up to received Law Matters, Offit Kurman’s monthly newsletter covering a diverse selection of legal and corporate thought leadership content.

MARYLAND | PENNSYLVANIA | VIRGINIA | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK | DELAWARE | WASHINGTON, DC

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contactedwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

Connect on LinkedIn