This week on Talking Headways, we’re joined by Jon Kramer, CEO of engineering and planning firm OHM Advisors. Kramer chats about going from intern to the head honcho over a 30-year period, what it’s like to compete against large engineering firms, and the current state of engineering education.
A partially edited transcript is below the player, but if you want an unedited transcript, with some AI typos, just click here.
Partial edited section:
Jeff Wood: How hard is it to compete against those 10 firms, the behemoths, that have fought each other over and over again?
Jon Kramer: It’s very, very hard for sure. They definitely have deeper pockets. There’s no way around that. And they have, quite frankly, some of the cooler projects, whether it’s international work or whether it’s just multi-billion-dollar project work.In our local backyard, the Gordie Howe Bridge, the international bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan to Canada, I don’t remember the exact price of the job, but it’s something like $5 billion. There’s no way a firm of our size can land that job on its own. It’s going to be one of these top-10 firms. But we’re able to be a part of that. So in that case, we’re a sub to them, and we may just have a little piece of it.
And we’re also able to offer things that they can’t, whether that’s just being more nimble or whether that’s being our self defined culture. We had our annual award ceremony recognition for all of our staff across 25 offices this morning. And there’s no doubt in my mind that we’re able to recognize people, with real heartfelt emotions in a way that a 10,000-person firm can’t.
Jeff Wood: Do you think we should even have those big firms? Do you think the consolidation of all the firms, you know Parsons Brinkerhoff getting bought by another firm or whoever else, etc. Is it good or bad to have those big behemoths?
Jon Kramer: I take a neutral position on that, not to run away from it, but just quite frankly, it was easy for me when we were really small to just complain, “Oh, they’re bigger. Oh, they have more money.” But I always like to think, “Well, what am I going to do about that?”
And somehow, we got bigger somehow, we got more money, and somehow we’re able to compete better. Is there a firm that’s maybe too big? Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but I feel like we can compete in a very meaningful, significant way against those large firms.
The other thing that happens: two large firms combine and now they’re a behemoth. What usually ends up happening is some of the significant staff from those firms that have been there 20 years or whatever get together and they end up forming their own firm.
This happened with my college roommate; he formed a firm with three people who left a big national firm. And today, 20 years later, they’re 450 people. To me, that’s a huge success story, but it wouldn’t have happened if his firm wasn’t so big that he didn’t feel like he had to say in its future and whatever else.
And you continually see new firms being formed. And there are some benefits to some of the consolidation. Sometimes clients have needs that are much quicker and don’t have the resources. How do you get it done if you don’t have enough people across multiple states in order to pull from?
It can be a lot harder if a community in one state has a very big job. Well, if there’s not enough firms in that state that are big enough to handle it, they’re kind of out of luck.
