Strategic Planning Written Assignment

Interview with upper management of WSP

Gray highlights are answers to the questions

· Where are we going? – Vision

· Where do you see your organization/ regional office in 3-5 years?

· Expand capabilities on environmental contaminated sites, not just chlorinated, but other emerging chemicals.

· Expand more in different ways of remediation projects such as oil and gas sectors.

· What about in 10-25 years?

· Petroleum sites are no longer exists in the future, we will explore more necessary business needs.

· What is a big goal that could polarize your team?

· Have smooth work towards sustainable work.

· Profit from more sustainable practices.

· Cleaner energy-based transition in our business and projects.

· One BIG target that everyone in the organization can contribute to?

· Strengthen project management skills

· Enforce client-facing structure

· Mission

· Why do you exist?

· Provide advice, intellectual property and services/compliance for environmental industry.

· Who do you do it for?

· All phase of society, including public, federal, and military.

· Who is your main customer?

· Industrial clients

· What do you do for them?

· Answers/advise services, resource reuse

· Values

· What is in the DNA of our organization

· Project management experience

· Service to clients

· Human resources

· What do you value?

· Project management

· Inclusion/diversity

· What are the cultures and norms of your organization?

· Inclusion of problem solving in all aspects.

· Understanding the value and skill that the staff can provide

· Where we are now?

· What do operations look like?

· Strong – financial/inclusivity/diversity/delivery

· What do staff look like?

· Most of the staff come with technical background, diverse disciplines/cultural background

· What do clients look like?

· Corporate/governmental,

· How else does your organization look different?

· Young/experienced staff population are balanced, in terms of age, cultural and locality.

· What is going to get in our way?

· HR

· Lack of potential candidates/talents, technical staff pool

· Political

· Politically controversial, still some policy is not adapted for the scientifically

· What do we need to do to get to where we want to go?

· Recruiting

· At local, not a national level

· Act earlier

· Time of training/resource to spend on new hires

· Recruiting – know business well to find the best fit, know the expertise, know how to perform as a team

· Learn to say yes or no, answer would be different based on time passed.

· Retaining talent

· Incentives/bonus for referral

· Mentoring bonus internally for helping other staff and retain

· LinkedIn/Online – counting resumes

· Hire outside recruiter – 3-months pay back, most beneficial way. 90% effective with desired candidates overall. 70% effective on principal/senior level. Competitive market within the industry using outside recruiter

· Current principal issues from different aspects in business measures

· Resource is the major element that drives each one of these aspects, it’s important to utilize resources properly and sufficiently and sell our service to client

· Rank the aspects from the one that’s most important/needs improvement to the ones that we are currently doing well:

1. client and market

2. technical research and innovation – Global Technical Excellence Conference (GTEC) - GTEC 2023

3. Financial

4. Supplier and vendors – fewer available resources/choice with the tech skills and competence

5. Process and efficiency – right now we manage this by utilization, time

6. Deliverable quality and time

· KPI

· Performance measures for strategic priorities

· Balance Score Card –

1. Financial – West region has 12 offices, the biggest one that brings the most portion of the organization revenue is San Diego, then Oakland

1. internal business processes – Measures: staff utilization, overhead time to solve problems internally, monthly review KPI of the office, yearly review

1. learning and growth – Use GTEC conference, E&E WSP conference, Quarterly meeting of each branch and each region, sector.

1. customers/clients – Quarterly marketing meeting, Pursuits, and proposals, wins, change orders. – CRM is the group that is tracking each posting, and manage them under each branch

· Cascading Goals

· Organizational – Financial: Sale/revenue, usually set up goals for sales, for the bid will go after the client on July & August

· Team – Each team work interconnected under each office and branch.

· Functional – AR days

· Individual – make to the utilization targets

· People

· Key people that are responsible for functional areas? What type of functional groups in your organization?

· Technical Department – engineers/geologist

· Account

· Managerial

· Financial

· Field work

· Legal

· HR

· Insurance

· Communicating the plan

· How to share the strategic plan with your organization

· Words/audio/pictures/websites

· Get alignment

· Communicate clearly and simply – weekly basis meeting to share progress.

· Get buy in

· Bring people into the strategic planning process, share details and open for any questions/concerns during the town meeting set regularly

· Capability to execute

· Are they given the tools they need to succeed? – Yes, company is taking request to accommodate the team/individuals’ needs