TCEP 170: Leading a Fast-Growing Civil Engineering Company in Today’s World

In this episode of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I talk to Peter Moore, P.E., LEED AP, ENV SP, F.ASCE, President of Chen Moore and Associates, and official nominee for worldwide ASCE President-Elect in 2021 about his experience over the years being a leader at a very fast-growing civil engineering company. The interesting part about his experience is that he became a part-owner at a very young age. He also discusses his vision as nominee for the ASCE President-Elect 2021. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Questions I Ask Peter: How do you personally make sure you are working on the right things each day when leading a fast-growing civil engineering company? When you have a fast-growing civil engineering company, how do you identify and solve problems? How important is it to create and document core processes and practice them consistently across the company? How do you build your company culture and carry it through in the company? You are a nominee for the ASCE President-Elect in 2021. Can you share with us what your vision is as a nominee? Here Are The Key Points Discussed in This Episode About Leading a Fast-Growing Civil Engineering Company: You are never too busy when there is a purpose to your actions. Prioritize who you work with, who you spend your time with, and who you invest your time with. You have to realize that company growth isn’t something that you can necessarily plan for. Growth happens and you need to make sure that you are there for the times that the good waves are around. Growing, in general, is all about your people; if you don’t trust the people you are working with, you should not even bother to try to grow your company because you are going to be disappointed. How you try to identify and solve problems comes down to the level of employees that you put in charge of the growth of your company. As a company owner, you are not going to make every decision in your firm. You need to hire the right people to help make the right decisions for you. For that, you need to be a great judge of talent and a great delegator. Your company will not grow fast or for long, if you don’t take care of the fundamentals of the business, as the fundamentals are what engineering is all about. Whenever we have a problem, I like to look at that problem as a “teaching moment” for the individual or the company. Everybody wants to be everybody's best friend, but it makes it so much harder when things go poorly in business, if you don’t have some level of separation. ASCE is a very large and important organization with many relationships throughout the world. Every big change starts with a small change, and that is why I would like to propose making small changes. My platform is made up of three concepts: Accountability, Advocacy, and Accessibility. Accountability is important as ASCE is a membership organization and should provide value to members. The organization should spend within its means and should set a baseline budget that is responsible for paying for the basics regarding membership. Everything on top of that is the investment we make for great things; it needs to come from conscious investments that are on top of the baseline budget that we need to have for our membership. Advocacy is the heart of everything we do. Civil engineers are the most selfless professionals on the entire planet. We need to tell the world how great civil engineers are and make sure that we have somebody in place who has that attitude on a national, international, and state-local government relations level. Accessibility: The civil engineering profession is an amazing profession and needs to be accessible to everyone. The only way we are going to get there is by making sure that we specifically build our bench and fill it with ...

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The Civil Engineering Podcast provides engineering career advice and success stories specifically for civil engineers. Civil engineers Anthony Fasano, PE and Christian Knutson, PE host the show and showcase civil engineering projects and professionals.

Each show includes an overview of an interesting civil engineering project and an interview with a successful civil engineering professional.