Dear Clients and Colleagues:
SSOE’s mission is making clients successful by saving them time, trouble, and money. Every year, we evaluate and assess if we’ve accomplished that mission. We look to you, our valued clients, to assist us in receiving the specific answers and determining what we can do to improve. One of the best vehicles for obtaining that has been conducting client satisfaction surveys, the results of which are the highlight of this report. In listening to your input, we discovered that we’ve made many noticeable gains in our performance. We’ve also listened to your feedback on how we can improve, seeking to determine the root cause of any areas needing improvement. Our goal is to point to even greater progress a year from now, assessing and adjusting aspects of our culture to align our ever-increasing potential with ever-improving performance.
In the course of transitioning to the role of CEO last year, I identified four key areas of focus for us as an organization: clients, culture, collaboration, and employees. I believe these areas are the foundational components to enabling our ongoing sustainable success, each one building upon the other and supporting future growth. A collaborative team environment creates engaged and motivated employees, which ultimately drives the success of our clients.
In addition to a summary of the results from our client satisfaction survey, this Performance Review highlights other areas of importance such as safety, sustainability, and the savings we return to you through our Value Promise. It is tremendously valuable for us to examine various aspects of our performance in terms of actual data, which we share with you as part of our continuous effort to be transparent. Above all, it provides a springboard for becoming an even stronger asset to our clients in the years to come.
Shedding light on client satisfaction
Each year, we ask your thoughts on what we’re doing right and what we need to adjust. We value your feedback, which is essential in helping us fulfill our commitment to quality, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Our survey asked you to list our areas of strength. Here’s what we heard:
Even with the best of feedback, there’s always room for improvement, and we value your suggestions for enhancing our service as much as the praise we receive. We combed through each of your comments and determined many are best addressed at their root cause. In response, we have developed a year long, company-wide journey aimed at enhancing our culture to bring it into alignment with our mission of making clients successful. We call this One Company, One Culture and it is made up of four key areas of action:
Collaboration
To improve collaboration between our own disciplines, with our partners, and with you, we are focusing on five behaviors: trust-building, willingness to challenge one another, commitment to decisions, peer accountability, and a focus on team results rather than individual egos. This approach is based on a concept presented in the bookThe Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Client Intimacy
SSOE continually strives toward client intimacy, which we define as “developing a deep understanding of your business, building personal relationships at multiple levels, acting as your trusted advisor, making you successful, and creating a long-term, sustainable relationship.” In order to earn your trust, we must provide high-quality deliverables and service that meets your standards. So, the first session in our client intimacy series focused on identifying and removing any roadblocks to quality.
Long-Term Results Oriented
The goal is to shift from making expedient decisions to thoughtful decisions that consider long-term impact. This includes not only the investments we make for our own business, but the decisions we make on your projects that have the potential to impact your business in the long term.
External Focus
We give top priority to your experience and success, always aiming to avoid internal processes that detract from, rather than add value to, your project’s outcome.
Rankings
We work on each project with the intention to strengthen our knowledge and skills and discover better solutions. This focus has advanced us to leadership positions in key markets as reflected in this year’s rankings.
Value Promise
Our Value Promise equals the project savings we document for clients. We benchmark our value by comparing what we save to our total fees with a goal of at least 100%.
Sustainability
SSOE creates sustainable businesses, sustainable communities, and a sustainable world, one project at a time.
Safety
Through training and information exchange, we aim to create a safety-always culture that influences all aspects of the work environment. Our comprehensive program includes new hire safety training and orientation, 10-hour OSHA construction training for all technical employees, a more extensive 30-hour OSHA construction training for all field and start-up employees, and project- or client-specific training as needed.
Virtual Design and Construction
We always opt for the project delivery method that best meets your needs. We’re finding that Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) brings our clients better and faster results through advanced technologies and a more integrated team approach. Even when a more traditional delivery model is used, you’ll see significant benefits from our collaboration strategies and technological capabilities we’ve developed through our experience with VDC.
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