Henkels & McCoy Inc.: Maintaining Success by Committing to Performance Improvement

Stephen J. Stilwell - 2/27/08

As engineering and construction firm Henkels & McCoy grows its business, the organization has been challenged by demands around project management proficiencies.

As engineering and construction firm Henkels & McCoy grows its business, the organization has been challenged by demands around project management proficiencies. The company has turned to its learning function to support its continued expansion.

How do you succeed in business? It’s a good question — one that has plagued business executives, MBA students and even reality-television contestants for years. But there’s another question that seems to get far less press in the business world today, and its answer has proven to be equally as elusive: How do you continue to succeed in business once you’ve already succeeded?

The problem of maintaining success — which many of us would consider a good problem to have — was exactly what Henkels & McCoy faced several years ago.

Henkels & McCoy, which boasts 4,600 employees in 80 permanent offices throughout its organization, is one of the largest privately held engineering, network development and construction firms serving the communications, information technology and utility industries in the United States.

Upon winning significant utility infrastructure contracts ranging from the building of transmission lines to inside wiring for the Pentagon — one of the world’s largest office buildings — and Citizens Bank Park — home of the Philadelphia Phillies — Henkels & McCoy has established itself as one of the country’s premier specialty contractors.

However, as the company began executing these large-scale, large-budget projects, and as they continued to set their sights on winning many more, senior executives began identifying subtle weaknesses regarding the standardization of project management methodologies throughout the organization. Essentially, the heads of this well-performing company understood that to continue their success and to take it to the next level, changes needed to be made.

“Our industry has become increasingly more sophisticated over the years as people look for enhanced productivity and safety,” said Kathy Mills, director of human resources. “The complex projects we were winning required that our staff keep pace with industry knowledge.”