The Pillars of Our Success as a Guaranteed Energy Savings Company
When you’re an engineer, you can’t help but break a concept down into the sum of its parts. Even something as intangible as “success” can be reverse-engineered in this manner. By doing so, you gain a deeper understanding of why you’re succeeding. In our trade, blind luck isn’t a thing that will carry you far. As the saying goes, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
Through our decades of work in the AEC industry, we’ve gained an understanding of what it takes to succeed at our jobs. The real clincher is the people you bring on board. No, there isn’t a jack of all trades on our team. While we all wear many hats, we’re perfectly happy having our individual wheelhouse to pull from. We call these the pillars of our success.
Independently, they are strong enough. Together, they’re much stronger than you can imagine. These are the pillars of our success and the people behind them.
We Put Client Relationships First
“Trust, value, and understanding.” Explains Mark Workman, Business Development Principal, when asked to describe the core nature of building a client relationship. “That is all there is to it. Those words might feel small, but trust me; they’re everything.”
He says, if you can keep these 3 words in mind every time you talk to a client, then you know you have their best interests at heart. With that, he gets to the core of business development; when you do the right thing, and when you serve your client, the rest will fall into place.
The way you treat your clients says a lot about why you’re in the business. It’s no secret when you’re only after the bottom line, even if your clients are too polite to say so. While you may still get business, you certainly won’t reach the momentum and exponential growth that doing things the hard (and right) way gives you.
Streamlined Solutions are By Design
When we design, it’s with intention. Doing it any other way is a good way to cut corners, go over budget, or produce subpar work. As Baccus Oliver, Design Principal, says, “We design solutions for facilities that work for our clients rather than control our clients.”
Many clients dipping their toes into the guaranteed energy-savings waters don’t understand what a great GESC can do for them. As Baccus is quick to point out, the designs we at AFP come up with save you operational money, which can be put elsewhere to bolster your facility even further.
Baccus makes a subtle point—as a guaranteed energy savings company, we don’t just save you money, we give you back focus, which is the continued maintenance, proactive improvement, and overall health and happiness of your buildings and the people within them.
Read more about what Baccus has to say about our streamlined design strategy.
We Problem Solve with an Engineer’s Intuition
Russ Litsinger, Managing Principal, will be the first to tell you that no, not all energy-savings solutions are created equal. “Being engineer-led allows us to objectively consider potential energy-savings solutions from a decidedly technical and rational basis.”
What Russ is saying is that we are engineers by trade. Our solutions are backed by technical, rational, and objective data that we measure and collect. The plan you receive from us is strictly tailored to your facility. Our primary concern is with the fundamental improvement of your facility’s energy systems.
How do we tailor to our clients? Russ has the answer. “We are a relationship-driven and an engineer-led energy services company that seeks to build enduring connections with our clients. This ultimately allows us to have an intimate understanding of their long-range goals and the opportunity to work collaboratively with them to both identify, and subsequently leverage energy savings opportunities as a means to support reinvestment into their facilities.”
We observe and listen to your needs, study your facility, and provide you with an energy solution that allows you operational flexibility to continually reinvest in the continued improvement of your facility.
We Guarantee Savings but Deliver Something More
The “guarantee” in “Guaranteed Energy Savings Company” is the least of our worries. It might sound like the core of our business model, but it’s the simplest part of our job. The challenge is finding essential improvements that fit into your operations.
David Belt is our Finance Principal, and he makes it his personal goal to ensure you have a long-term strategy for the continued efficiency of your facility. “A typical guaranteed energy savings company is more interested in introducing products and lining up projects. We’ve decided to dig deeper than that with our clients.
We’re more interested in a long-term relationship with our clients. Many have already worked with us on other projects, but even with new clients we want to work on the long game; that’s where your facility aims to gain a profound advantage that will last you generations. That’s where the real change happens.”
Learn more about David’s commitment to financial well-being, and the principles he employs.
Our Success is Rooted in Consistency
A design is one thing; how do you execute it? J.P. Kelly, Construction Principal, is the guy that will reassure you when you have this question. He’s the construction guy, and the one responsible for ensuring consistency between the design and the follow-through.
“Idea and action are yoked together and require different attention and commitment at various points in the energy-savings process. Many great ideas fail to reach their full potential or even properly launch due to a failure in execution.
Successful implementation is the marriage of an idea with action. That is the most valuable. To stress the point further, all actions, no matter how small, need to be rooted in intention. That means all ideas must have action, all actions must be founded on an idea. Anything outside of that ecosystem is a waste of resources.”
J.P.’s job is to get everyone on the same page and at the same time, especially once the ground is broken. “A project is not like a train; it’s not stuck on rails. At any time it can get sidetracked. As you go, it’s important to continually monitor progress by effectively engaging the construction team. You have to take the temperature of the room, so to speak, and ensure that everyone is at 100%.”
Learn more about J.P.’s construction principles, and his pledge to consistency.
When We Stand Together, We Stand Stronger
We have impressive track records as accountants, engineers, and project managers. However, when we work together, we become greater than the sum of our parts. When we reverse engineered “success”, we didn’t do it just so we get a feel for what makes it happen. We learned how to guarantee it; through hard work, collaboration, and a whole lot of skill. It’s no big secret precisely because there is no shortcut.
There may be more pillars of success out there, but we think the ones we rely on have given us a solid foundation to build on. At AFP, we’re happy to have a diverse team that shares a common goal; a better future for all through healthy and holistic engineering.