Engineering success

Mansoor Ahsan takes
pride in the fact that
he’ll do anything to get the job done — even if it’s
grunt work.

“The key is passion, and the
passion is in the grunt work,”
he says.

This CEO of Bridgefarmer &
Associates Inc. says that taking
pride in doing grunt work sets
an example for his 50 employees that they should do whatever is necessary to get the
job done, even if they feel it’s
beneath them. It also shows
clients that he’s fully committed to meeting their needs.

The example he sets is one
way he builds both relationships and his civil engineering
firm, which grew 33 percent in
two years to reach 2007 revenue of $13.6 million.

Smart Business spoke with
Ahsan about how to build customer relationships as if you’re
hunting prey.

Q. How do you build client

Knowing the client, knowing the needs of the project
and knowing what clients are
looking for and why. That’s
what starts the engine. Then
everything comes once you
have a client.

Providing solutions helps
the relationship, and not selling what you want to sell but
actually giving them the service that they are looking for.

Study the job. If I can take
a metaphor, it’s you hunt the
job, then you fix the job —
you hunt the prey, then you
skin it and you eat it. Go and
study the job, and you win
the job from your competition, and when you’re doing the job, you do an excellent
job, where the client feels
like you were worth every
penny. Intense studying of the
job will always be rewarding,
whether it’s on that very project or the next project, but
you will be remembered.

That’s where the relationship
starts. That’s what any business
counts on — relationships with
clients and relationships with
your employees and relationships with your peers and your
colleague firms.

Q. How do you build employee

Cater to people’s needs.
[For] people you want to
retain, you want to make
sure that whatever their
issues are, you address
them. If it’s just money,
nobody makes enough
money, and we understand that, but there are
a lot of other things that
go with it.

I’m a firm believer that
when people change
companies, they don’t
really change companies,
they just change managers. Company A is no
different than Company
B. If they had one set of
issues at one company,
they’ll have another set
of issues at another company.
If you understand that psyche, you can address those

We don’t have a one-shoe-fits-all model. Address it on an
individual basis. For instance,
people can be paid overtime,
or they can take time off. If
there is a married woman who
wants to spend time with her
kids, she may prefer to take
time off and go spend time
with her kids.

Whereas, if there is a young
guy, but he needs more money,
he may be paid time-and-a-half
on his overtime, so addressing
the needs of the employees
helps develop that relationship.

Q. How do you help employees build better relationships
with clients and peers?

If someone wants to pass their
initial exams, then we promote
them to a project-engineer level,
where they can see various disciplines of the project, how
they’re put together and how well things are coming together.

From that point on, they move
to the next phase, where they’re
supervising other people, and
that is the opportunity that they
can develop relationships with
their peers and their clients.

They would be given that
next opportunity when the
client starts to ask for them,
and they want to be in the
leadership role. When a client
calls me and says, ‘I want to
have Person X on this project,’
that tells me that Person X has
reached the next level, and
that’s the time when that person automatically is grown to
that next level. If a client starts
to ask for that person, that is a
good clue-in that client maintenance is being taken care of
by this individual, and this person is ready to be a project
manager and be in that role.

That is the highest level he
can get because, technically
and financially, that individual
is responsible for a project
delivery system.

Q. How does promoting
people from within help both
clients and employees?

It sets a good example, and it
gives a good insight to the
staff that there is an opportunity within the company to
grow, and it also helps the
organization that it’s a home-grown person. They understand all the quirks.

Clients like that if somebody is
promoted from inside because
then it’s not a sales job. The
thing that matters to us and has
worked for us is we don’t do a
quick sales job. A sale to us is
when a client hires us because
we found a solution to a problem for them.

HOW TO REACH: Bridgefarmer & Associates Inc., (972) 231-8800 or