pgs. 14-21 - Exchange Magazine

10/20/06
PHOTOGRAPHY: EXCHANGE MAGAZINE
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MOVER & SHAKER
Greenand
Growing
WATERLOO’S CONESTOGAROVERS & ASSOCIATES HAS
A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACT
B Y PA U L K N O W L E S
t first glance, it may have not
appeared to be an earth-shaking
corporate merger. After all, when
Frank A. Rovers and Associates joined
with Conestoga Engineering, the new
company – Conestoga-Rovers & Associates – had precisely five employees,
including founders Frank Rovers and Don
Haycock.
That was November 1, 1976. Today, the
family of companies often known simply
as CRA has 2,350 employees working in
70 offices, in six countries – Canada, the
United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Argentina and Brazil. It is still headquartered in Waterloo, where CRA has
expanded to fill six office facilities.
A
continued on page 16
Ed Roberts (left), president and
Glenn Turchan, vice president of
Conestoga-Rovers & Associates
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MOVER & SHAKER
It is a mark of its ongoing success that
CRA’s 30th anniversary celebration PR
release mentioned the anniversary in
just seven words, and then focused on
the announcement of “the opening of
seven new offices in the United States
and strong growth in our South American operations.” The new offices, by the
way, are in Kansas, Nebraska, Arizona,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and
New York.
Executive entrepreneurs
Conestoga-Rovers & Associates is
led by a four-man team of executive
entrepreneurs: Steve Quigley, Glenn
Turchan, Ed Roberts and Ian Richardson. Roberts, who is President of the
company, and Turchan, Executive VicePresident, are based in Waterloo.
CRA headquarters provides accounting, human resources, training and other
programs for all offices, but Roberts
describes their management structure as
“flat”. The key people are 48 shareholders
– including the four executive team
members – all of whom are project lead-
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“Frank Rovers
announced that he was
going to start looking at
how to transition the
company to the second
generation.”
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ers. Head office can worry about administrative concerns, while the shareholders and other senior staff remain focused
on clients, and their projects.
Even Roberts keeps that focus – he
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
says about half his time is spent,
hands-on, with his specific project
assignments; he currently is leading
three such projects.
This executive team was formed in
2000, five years after Frank Rovers, who
was President, decided on a unique succession plan. Turchan says that in 1995,
“Frank Rovers announced that he was
going to start looking at how to transition the company to the second generation.” Rovers revealed that in 2000, he
would surrender the President’s office to
“a new management team.”
Turchan and Roberts agree that the
succession process was “competitive” –
because at Conestoga-Rovers, a company driven by entrepreneurial spirit,
everything is competitive... and it’s all
for the good of the company. Roberts
laughs that the make-up of the new,
four-man team was first announced at
the company Christmas party.
And what of Frank Rovers? He continues to serve as Chairman of the Board;
more to the point, he spends half his time
heading up the fledgling CRA operation
in Brazil and Argentina, where the staff
has grown from two to 200 in two years,
and a single office in 2004 has become
six in Brazil and one in Argentina..
That’s just the kind of company it is.
Which begs the question, what kind of
company is CRA? What does this successful, growing business actually do?
Across the environmental spectrum
That question is not simply
answered. Conestoga-Rovers is actually a family of companies – internationally, there are 15 companies under their
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PHOTO COURTESY OF: CONESTOGA-ROVERS & ASSOCIATES
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Conestoga Rovers & Associates founding partners (l-r): Frank Rovers, Chairman of the Board, Ron Schwark, Vice President and Don Haycock, Vice President.
corporate umbrella. A CRA information
piece explains the company this way:
“CRA is a family of companies that provides multi-disciplinary engineering,
environmental, construction, and IT
services.” But that same brochure then
proceeds to list 20 “general service
areas,” ranging from agricultural services through air quality management;
shareholder-entrepreneurs.
The time was right
Turchan explains that ConestogaRovers & Associates was created at
precisely the right time. The 1970s and
early 1980s “were a big time for emerging environmental awareness.” That
era saw one of the most infamous
environmental crises – the Love Canal,
in Niagara Falls, New York, an environmental catastrophe caused by improper
landfill management. It was a disaster
– and an opportunity. Says Turchan,
“CRA became the engineer for the
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CRA valued
diversity, even in
its earliest days.
construction, operation and maintenance; environmental site assessment;
environmental remediation; geotechnical engineering; municipal infrastructure planing and design; solid waste
management; water and wastewater
treatment,” and as many more categories again.
CRA valued diversity, even in its earliest days under Rovers and Haycock –
who is also still involved in the company. Conestoga Engineering focused on
civil engineering and municipal infrastructure; Frank Rovers and Associates
were engaged in environmental engineering applications. Both founders
were engineering graduates of University of Waterloo – as are Roberts, Turchan, and fully half of the current 48
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Page 18
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environmental expertise
to the rest of the world.”
design of the Love Canal remediation.”
That meant much more than one
important assignment. The Love Canal
crisis heightened environmental
awareness among American legislators, and “precipitated major reform in
environmental regulation in the U.S.”
From the late 1970s on, regulations
were passed governing waste management, toxic substances (such as PCBs),
and other environmental hot buttons.
The U.S. government also created a
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006
“Superfund” to pay
for environmental
clean-ups on sites
where no private
enterprise could be
identified as responsible for the mess.
The environment
became top of mind
in the U.S. – over
1,000
American
sites were identified
according to the risk
to public health and
the environment –
and
ConestogaRovers & Associates were well positioned, through expertise and reputation rising from the Love Canal project,
to capture a lot of the business arising
from the environmental protection
remediation projects. Starting in the
1980s, CRA became the engineering
firm involved in many “Superfund”
sites. The company remained based in
Waterloo, but its growth was driven by
business in the United States.
Even today, CRA Inc. – the U.S. company – does 100% of its work in the
United States, while CRA Ltd. – the
Canadian entity – does 60% of its work
in Canada, and 40% in the U.S.
The rest of the world was somewhat
slow to follow the American lead, says
Roberts. In those early days of American regulation, “nothing” was happening in Canada concerning the environment. But Canada, like “the rest of the
western world, followed suit with the
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MOVER & SHAKER
U.S. in the next one or two decades.”
Despite ongoing environmental controversies in Canada and other countries,
Roberts believes that we have essentially
learned our environmental lessons, at
least in the west. “It took them a while to
become environmentally responsible...
but everybody’s aware, now.” He argues
that developing countries are economically handicapped when it comes to putting environmental issues first, but as
prosperity comes to those parts of the
world, they will also become more environmentally responsible.
Roberts joined CRA in 1985; the
company had 72 employees. Turchon
came on board in 1987; CRA had
grown to employ 100. That kind of
growth has been evident from the very
beginning. Roberts says, “Our growth is
about 13% per year, on average.” CRA
projects a staff of 4000 by 2010, but
both Roberts and Turchon are quick to
note that they have no intention of sacrificing service and quality to simply
reach a magic numerical milestone.
Growth has been a standard at CRA.
PHOTOGRAPHY: EXCHANGE MAGAZINE
The 13% solution
Roberts joined CRA in 1985 when the company
had 72 employees, today there is 2,350.
Turchon notes that “the 80s were a
solid decade of growth for environmental engineering,” but continued growth
has been founded on the increasing
diversity of the family of companies.
CRA materials list page after page of
specific services, as diverse as noise
and odor assessments; database management; or landfill gas control.
The most challenging decade to date
may have been the 1990s, when the
recession struck in 1990-91. It was like “a
bubble burst in the environmental engineering field,” says Turchon. This caused
“consolidation in the industry” – and CRA
took full advantage of opportunities to fill
gaps left by the failures of competing
firms. “We continued to grow through
the 90s,” says Turchon. “CRA was able to
take advantage of it. We picked up the
pieces of firms going bankrupt.” And the
company continued to diversify into
more disciplines of engineering.
The corporate environment
CRA is clearly doing something right.
This is measurable, not only through its
continual growth or its positive profit
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about accounting, human resources,
health and safety, quality, training,” he
says. “They just have to worry about
their clients. That group of shareholders, associates and project managers
can have a straight client focus.”
Recruitment
PHOTOGRAPHY: EXCHANGE MAGAZINE
company’s personnel. The company
was named one of “Canada’s 50 Best
Managed Companies,” earlier this year.
As reflected in the succession structure, the company is “set up to be competitive,” says Roberts. “The firm is
based on competition and performance... a healthy competition. CRA’s performance as a whole benefits us all.”
That benefit is easily understood –
although there are 15 companies, 48
shareholders, and 70 offices, there is
only one corporate bottom line. CRA’s
financial performance is measured collectively... and in Canadian dollars.
Roberts describes it as “one profit centre.” Revenues in 2005 totalled $265
million.
The system works. Roberts says “it
really enhances our company relationships... we can tap into the best
resources across the company” for any
specific project. If a project succeeds,
everybody benefits.
The potential for advancement in the
company – as lived out in the succession program – “really motivated the
mid-level people to stay, and to work
hard,” says Turchon. He also notes that
the top level people are incredibly loyal
– “There has never been a shareholder
leave the firm.”
That may be because the shareholders have considerable autonomy. Each
shareholder operates at least one of the
corporate offices, and “has the autonomy and authority to run that office as
we see fit,” says Roberts. “Each has the
responsibility completely.”
Roberts and Turchon – who as noted
10/20/06
Turchon says partners focus on service to
clients.
spend a lot of time in hands-on project
management – admit that this does
present challenges. But they defend the
system – because it works, and
because it keeps all of the shareholders
directly related to their clients.
However, head office does provide
key services; for example, quality is
assured because the CRA corporate
family is ISO 9001 registered right
across the company. Turchon notes
that while each senior manager values
autonomy, “from 2000 to the present
the management team has really been
working on the corporate infrastructure, and has built a strong infrastructure” which provides the four dozen
entrepreneur-shareholders a strong
foundation for growth of their individual projects. “They don’t have to worry
CRA’s leaders talk a lot about success – and they have a lot of success to
talk about. They admit though that,
given the proportion of their work that
is done in the United States, the rising
Canadian dollar presented a financial
challenge. However, says Roberts, that
issue has been solved: “Over the past
year and a half the management team
and all senior managers have done
their best to overcome this problem.”
And, he says, they have succeeded.
A bigger problem lies in the area of
personnel. Both Roberts and Turchon
first encountered CRA as co-op students; that experience has made the
company a very co-op friendly place.
At any time during school term, there
will be between 10 and 24 University of
Waterloo co-op in their Waterloo
offices. “University of Waterloo has
become known for its engineering
department and environmental studies,” says Turchon.
The problem is not in finding young
graduates – Roberts says “the difficulty
is the lack of qualified people at the
intermediate level.”
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Not surprisingly, CRA’s leaders see
the future as nothing but positive. The
company is constantly diversifying,
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MOVER & SHAKER
“There has never
been a shareholder
leave the firm.”
America, 50 years ago... As countries
develop, what will follow is demand by
citizens that environmental remediation be conducted.”
“We’ll have an opportunity to take
our environmental expertise to the rest
of the world.”
Photo right: Frank Rovers (left) and Karen Mayfield,
Director of eSolutions Group/CRA Shareholder.
Photo below: CRA Shareholders celebrate the 30th
Anniversary at the Cleveland House.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF: CONESTOGA-ROVERS & ASSOCIATES
exploring new opportunities – and a
world filled with vulnerable water supplies, landfill sites, municipal infrastructures and oil fields certainly offers plenty
of opportunities for the CRA corporate
family. Turchon ticks off some of the
current growth areas: “process engineering... geotechnical engineering...
infrastructure.” He pauses at the latter
category, adding, “The infrastructure of
North America is aging. There will be
billions and billions of dollars spent in
that area over the next 20 to 30 years.”
Turchon notes that CRA has already
done work in 50 countries. He looks to
developing countries, where there are
“problems occurring similar to North
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