POSITION: Principals
COMPANY: Providence Engineering & Environmental Group
WHAT THEY DO: Engineering and environmental consulting services
REVENUE: $14 million in 2008
NEXT GOAL: Make the Houston office successful, and pursue federal government and international contracts
Providence Engineering & Environmental Group had clients in Houston. It had projects in Houston. But what it didn’t have was an office in Houston.
The company didn’t want to transfer someone who didn’t want to move. Nor did it want to hire someone who wasn’t passionate about opening a new office and providing opportunities for other employees to grow.
“We looked for several years for the right person,” says Todd Black, one of the company’s three founding principals. “I bet we interviewed 10 people.”
The dilemma, not dissimilar to the age-old question of the chicken and the egg, was solved when an employee in Providence’s Dallas office planned to move to Houston because her husband was being transferred.
By communicating closely with employees, Providence’s management team of Black, Rich Major [another of its founding principals], Yousheng Zeng and Karen Holden [founding principal Mike Schurtz recently retired] recognized her need to move and her desire to stay with the company.
Not only did the decision for her to head the Houston office—which opened in July—make sense, it also was an opportunity for employees to grow and take control of their projects—something that is important to Providence’s core values.
“We hire people who have some entrepreneurial spirit,” Black says. “You get them involved in the decision-making process, and they have some ownership.”
Zeng agrees, adding the company knows that keeping employees engaged, challenged and rewarded benefits everyone.
Perhaps that’s why Providence has grown so rapidly. In just nine years, it has more than 100 employees in offices in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Gulfport, Lake Charles and Lecompte.
“We want to grow because that provides more opportunity for different tiers of management,” Zeng says. “If they keep doing the same thing, they get bored.”
