Rick Wilson Named 2010 HRLA Honoree

Our VP of Human Resource, Richard (Rick) Wilson was named as a 2010 Honoree by the HR Leadership Awards of Greater Washington on June 15th. During his tenure at Centennial, Rick has reduced voluntary employee turnover and expanded employee training programs and benefits packages believing that employees are the differentiator between good companies and great companies.

Since 2001, the HR Leadership Awards of Greater Washington have honored HR executives for outstanding contributions to their organizations and to the field of human resource management through organizational leadership, risk taking, innovation, vision and communication, community service and ethics.

I attended the awards dinner and I thought it was great to hear about all the exciting people development efforts the leading companies in the U.S. are carrying out, like training and development efforts, wellness programs, pay for performance, alignment of the organization with goals, and session planning. At the same time to realize that Centennial is doing the same things as a Northrop Grumman or Marriott Corporation was amazing.

Rick Wilson was nominated based on his HR leadership skills and the outstanding effort at alignment between the employees and the mission of the business. Rick has positively impacted the long term culture of Centennial and it was great to see him honored at this event.

Branding Schmambing Continued – What Color Are The Business Cards Anyway? A Few Branding Examples

Air Products & Chemicals
In the early 1980's (yes, I am dating myself now) I had the grand privilege of working for Air Products & Chemicals. Before "brand" was a fledgling thought in the eyes of the business, Air Products already understood how key this was to their future success. Not only did we have very well thought out brand standards (which I helped with), but they said across all 66,000 employees, the brand must be lived. We are about quality, safety, responsiveness and helping our clients improve results. Think about it, Air Products sold air. But how and what did the liquid nitrogen mean to that company, that hospital, that assembly line? Things like making sure the 3,000 tanker trucks and delivery trucks were designed and painted to match - to stand out. That we made sure the trucks were washed once a week (others in the industry never washed their trucks) or hand wiped every cylinder when it was delivered. To systems, we put in the first telephony system for the liquid cryogenics in the world so that the cryo tanks would call the customers and say (based on their desired refill points) "I am half empty do you want me to send a truck or do you want to talk to a live person?" To the training of employees, and to the safety truck rodeos we sponsored. Even the fact that we had research labs targeting the key markets that any client could use at no cost (food freezing, steel, semiconductor etching, etc.) These were all key to the brand meaning what it did/does.

Center for Job Order Contracting Excellence
CJE transitioned from being part of Arizona State University to a stand-alone organization. I was the industry chairman during this transition. I called for a facilitated session on the strategic planning going forward (key in this was the brand development elements). Here are a few links with information worth looking at: http://www.jocexcellence.org/strategic_plans.htm
http://www.jocexcellence.org/documents/CJE_Strategic_Plan_Session.pdf
http://www.jocexcellence.org/documents/Elevator_Pitch_CJE_12-2-08.pdf
Prior to this effort we had no clear understanding of the organization’s focus, what the members want from us, etc. After going through the strategic planning process, we defined the brand to mean education and sharing best practices in JOC. One key brand platform is the website www.JOCexcellence.org, where the design, flow and message were driven by the brand vision. A second example where brand drove the elements was the development of a new simplified logo (the old one showed skyscrapers being built, when we do not support skyscrapers being built). The strategic effort has helped time and time again. When we are challenged to change or take action, we always go back to “What does this mean to the brand/what are the brand impacts—good, bad, risk, alignment?”

Branding Centennial Contractors Enterprises
I was hired in 2004 to help evolve the Centennial brand from stealth to the world class recognized industry leader that they really were and are. I started at the brand development side. I questioned everything from the mission statement, the core values, the development of a value statement, etc. There were difficult sessions from the president on down. I even talked with the competition. I wanted to know the perceptions, the beauty, the soft and the hard spots. The process took about six months to bring to a point were we could craft a branding statement and move forward. Today we have a brand store that gives insight to this brand thinking, but at the high level look at our elevator pitch. We realized that our brand was about people, solutions, and living up to our promises and that we are a different kind of company. So we made sure that we pulled this brand thinking into our themes, our designs, and our approach to all the marketing and sales. Once the brand platform is crafted and believed and understood, the communications and marketing development efforts flow from here. We realized that our key growth efforts were building brand awareness and building a body of knowledge around JOC and Centennial. We also focused on the media and public relations side based on this brand thinking.

Brand is a challenge, because if left untended and cared for it can grow all weedy and diminish over time. People begin to change it, shape it to their view and next thing you know you are no longer aligned and it is hard to be honest with yourself and the organization all the time.

Branding Schmambing – What Color Are The Business Cards Anyway?

I was recently asked to explain what brand means to an industry association. So I shared some thinking and background on how to look at the importance of branding within the mix of a business or a nonprofit organization. My background includes a large non-profit organization, where I found that branding was even more important in the growth of the organization.

A few high level thoughts.

1.Brand is not the logo (although the logo is a key brand element), the colors, the ads, or the website.
2.Brand is a promise. It is the outward meaning, understanding and value of the company (or product or service) being associated with that entity.
3.Brand must be aligned with the organization and what it represents.
4.Brand is the split second relationship feeling associated with an organization, its employees and the clients.
5.Brand is the spirit, the feel of an organization.
6.A powerful brand is 100% aligned with the value, the meaning, the movement forward of an organization/product/service. It is the most honest thinking and conversations you will ever have - if not, the brand promise is hollow.
So many people end up spending way too much time on colors and business card designs when they say brand, but they miss the underlying key thinking and drivers to a truly great brand. In technical environments this urge to jump into tactical stuff too soon is always prevalent. Branding should be the anchor point for the whole organization and the thinking from which other things flow - like design, message, actions within marketing, sales, etc.

Key: Brand allows for alignment of the whole organization. It brings the history and the future vision into the mix. It challenges us to ask, How is what we say we are demonstrated; how is it coming to life? Brand is the experience. It is the proof that what you say you are, you really are. I use a slide when I get to this point of a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger, all pumped up, with guns blazing and the wording "brand means you can say you are this...." But in realty you are this... and it is a picture of the Teletubbies. You know what I mean, we have all experienced it in our lives. A store that has a tagline, "friendliest store in town" and you never see a smiling face. Or an airline that says "on time and best in class awards for...." and they are hardest people to travel with, or the bank that says in their TV spots "you matter to us" and when you call them you never get a live person and it takes forever to push button your way to one.

I can fill up pages of examples like these. The fact is, the more aligned the brand is with the value you bring, and the people in the organization are living to that brand promise, the more successful you will be in growing and reaching more people. The more off you are, the less alignment there is - well the fact is you can actually create negative brand value and drive the business into the ground.

Podcast: Creating Sustainable Bridges at Fort Eustis

Learn more about recycled structural composite and how Centennial built the first train bridges using this material at Fort Eustis.

The Green Bridge to Somewhere

The interest is amazing. Two train bridges made from 100% recycled milk jugs, detergent jugs and tires. They are the first of their kind in the world. It started with the interest by our client at Fort Eustis in the Commonwealth of Virginia wanting to do something green and meaningful. It was accomplished thanks to the ability of Job Order Contracting to allow collaboration and innovation between owners and contractors and the fact that the base has had a long term successful JOC program in place and a team at Centennial aligned with their goals.

Recently ENR ran a story on the bridges at Ft. Eustis. It was exciting to see this project come together and take shape. It is a positive testament to job order contracting, sustainability and creativity.

Yesterday, at media day for the bridges, spokespeople from Centennial, Axion, who manufactures the material and Ft. Eustis described the project and its benefit to the environment to local TV and print media. They noted that the material is just as durable as traditional materials, has the same life expectancy, without the maintanence worries. It also keeps these materials out of landfills.

Phil Reed, Fort Eustis Directorate of Public Works Engineering Division chief, said "Centennial, our go to team, allowed us to use a design-build fast-track process to get into the hands of the new technology and came up with this for a better alternative for the long term and allowed us to complete the process in half the time that we would have using conventional construction."

There is a strong tie in public funded construction and job order contracting for sustainably. We wrote a white paper, Shades Of Green on this topic and it sets the ground work for why JOC and sustainability go hand in hand in a public facilities environment.

RSC materials being delivered to the construction location.

Train bridge was built to sustain a 130-ton load.

Members of Centennial's Ft. Eustis team pose for picture on completed bridge.

Job Order Contracting Helping the Commonwealth

In the recent May edition of the Commonwealth Contractor I had the opportunity to write an article on Job Order Contracting and how it is helping the public facilities with their renovation and repair efforts. The article is titled Job Order Contracting a Collaborative Solution For Virginia Facilities Owners.

At the core of this article is the ability to share on the benefits of JOC, including:

· Responsive support allows for reduced backlog of projects

· More funds are applied to construction instead of procurement costs

· The majority of the funds go to the local economy

· Growth of small, minority and disadvantaged subcontracting businesses

· Dependable ongoing relationships

· Reduced or eliminates claims, change orders and punch lists

Every public facilities person needs a job order contracting program!

For more information public facilities managers and construction managers should look to the industry association, CJE The Center For JOC Excellence and their regional chapter.

Brand Store Remodeled

We have just updated our branding and marketing guidelines for 2010. It was interesting to work through this update and think back almost 6 years when I started on all this. It was pretty much a clean slate. No written guidelines, no marketing plan. Centennial had operated for 15 years very successfully as a stealth brand, but the founder realized that to grow into new markets and non-federal segments, we need to grow the brand recognition and the awareness of job order contracting and take it all to the next level.

The process started with the traditional brand development efforts. Assessment of the current brand, interviews with the clients, with the key field and corporate leaders, the subcontractors, the industry and even the competition. What did the Centennial brand mean, represent, say? What was the promise held and committed to by the brand. Everything was explored, refined, defined and tested. I was blessed to have a solid starting point – a brand that truly lived up to the inferred promise, “Building relationships that withstand the test of time by keeping our promises and honoring our commitments”.

From no web, no written guidelines to where we are today is fun to remember. So with the recent release of the new standards, including marketing, development and public relations processes, samples and more it is worth stopping and recognizing how far we have come and re-engaging a vision of where we are headed. It is more than a binder or a website – it is a general alignment of all areas of Centennial on a single brand message and image. The new brand store is one level of the effort.