By: Iain Macfarlane, Director

It was 2013 when I first started thinking about what it might be like to build a business. I was a small cog in a very large machine and whilst that meant I was involved in some amazing projects and worked with people that are now close friends, I felt my measurable impact was minimal.

Running parallel to my adventures, long-time colleagues and friends had set up DFC in 2010, and we inevitably began to talk behind the scenes.

What might it look like if I made the leap and joined DFC? Where could we take the business? What kind of business did we want to build?

This started the thoughts running in my mind about trying to write some ‘rules of engagement’ down. Some guidance as to what I, and hopefully we, considered important in how we went about building and running a business.

I needn’t have bothered because it turns out that someone had already beaten me to it. That man was Mike Dempsey. Eight years after making that leap from international consultancy to three-person start-up, I’d like to tell you about them and where they sit in my mind.

Image: Mike Dempsey, Studio Dempsey

Mike is a graphic designer by trade, working from the late 1960s as an art director for two leading British publishing houses. He has designed stamps for the Royal Mail, feature film titles for Ridley Scott, rebranded the English National Opera and South Bank Centre, and regularly contributes to Design Week, a leading online design magazine.

It was here that I first came across Mike’s ‘Design Business Tips’, that in true graphic designer style, he had crafted into a bold poster, a clear statement of his thoughts on business from his experience in the industry.

Image: Mike Dempsey’s Design Business Tips – Design Week, Volumn 23, No. 42 (source; Swiss Miss blog)

‘Design Business Tips’, featured in Volume 23, No. 42 of Design Week. It struck a chord immediately. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the soundbite, the motivational quote on a greetings card, a social media post about how to be the best you can be. That stuff makes me cringe, but there was something about the carefully crafted words that just felt right in a business and new venture sense. It felt like these were the rules I wanted to follow in my business. I could see immediately what they meant to me, despite Mike operating in the graphic design arena, and me working on the engineering of buildings. They seemed to immediately cross over different worlds, likely intentionally.

I’m sure that reading these will trigger different thoughts for different people. I’m sometimes asked by our team what they mean in my mind, and during informal discussions within the business it has become clear to me that the intelligence of Mike Dempsey’s words is that they can be interpreted slightly differently by many.

This blog aims to explain in my own words what these ‘rules’ mean to me. Perhaps they mean something different to you?

Seek out clients you like

Our clients are obviously key to our business. I want to work with people that I like, but what does that mean?

I like clients that do great work. Clients that value our input, engage in discussion and debate, and are keen to learn more about our skills. Linked to Neal’s great article [Fire Engineering: Why care? by Neal Butterworth], I like clients that care about doing the right thing and that have a duty of care.

Here at DFC we have, and will continue to, turn down work for clients that we do not feel are applying the correct level of care. As Engineers, we have a responsibility, trusted by society to deliver safe buildings for people to live and work in. If a client does not share our desire for care, and is only interested in profit and corner cutting, they are not the right client for us.

This has manifested itself into a significant amount of repeat work from a core set of great clients. If you work with us on a regular basis and are reading this, congratulations, you’re probably one of the people I’m referring to here. We like working with our long term clients and the more we do, the better we get, and the more value we can bring.

I’m also not afraid to say that I like clients that pay their invoices promptly!

It’s a very British thing to avoid talking about money, in case someone is offended, but this is an important element in the relationship between client and consultant that is often overlooked. If a client values our work, agrees our costs, we deliver on what we said we would, then an invoice should be paid on time. We like clients that pay our invoices on time, and I’m sure we’re not alone in that!

Hire a good financial head

In the early stages of a business, managing the finances is something you can keep up with yourself. When there were only three of us in the business, I used to religiously check the bank balance every morning. Has it changed from yesterday? Have any invoices been paid in? What’s the bank balance? Am I going to get paid at the end of the month or is it going to be a tight one? Can I afford my mortgage this month?

As the business grows, the financial burden becomes much larger. You need to start chasing many more invoices, cross checking them with projects, paying the government their corporation tax and VAT. Then with employees comes payroll, pensions, expenses. It starts to add up and before you know it, it’s a full time role, and I have no formal financial training.

“Hire a good financial head” Mike says…. We’ve been lucky that we haven’t had to hire one single person specifically, we’ve managed to build a team of people that when combined, are the good financial head of DFC.

We have Adam’s relentless commercial head working 24/7, we’ve got Jonny as the numbers man dealing with accountants and the tax man, and we’ve got a great business support team that keep things ticking along nicely. Keeping a sensible eye on the financials means we can build a long-term business that will hopefully outlast our involvement.

As we continue to grow, there will probably be a need for a single person to take on the role of our ‘good financial head’ – interested? Get in touch…

Take on interesting projects

Like many people, I want to be challenged in my work, I want to find a sense of achievement, and I want to be interested in the work I do. Taking on interesting projects is a great rule to have and one that we take into consideration when deciding to bid for work.

‘Interesting’ is obviously subjective. Interesting can take the form of a particularly unusual engineering challenge. That may be designing a smoke control system to enable long travel distances in residential design, designing very tall buildings, tackling the fire safety challenges arising from buildings made from timber, assessing external wall systems for the benefit of society, or working on a development in your own neighbourhood. I personally prefer the regeneration of older buildings with a modern twist.

Interesting can take many forms, and we try and enable our team to work on interesting projects. If someone wants to work on a particular project because they find it interesting, then we will look to enable it, if it also works for the business. If our team are engaged and challenged, they too will have a sense of achievement in their careers. If the team have a sense of achievement in their career, this encourages them to stay within the organisation.

Don’t use business jargon

Communication is a huge skillset that is often overlooked by engineers and business leaders. The ability to distil a complex topic into something that a non-engineer, client or otherwise, can understand is a massive benefit. I don’t know whether it is true, but there is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that states:

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”

I like it, so I’m going to assume for the purposes of this blog that he did indeed say it.

I’m a believer that the more you know about a subject, the more you should be able to present it in simple terms to someone not as familiar as yourself. The person that can present something in simple terms is the one that allows others to understand. If others understand, they value your experience, your input, they build trust and they want to work with you again because they are learning from you.

Here at DFC, we discourage the use of business jargon wherever possible. We don’t try and waffle our way around a topic, instead we prefer clear and direct communication. We don’t try and sound impressive by playing business lingo bingo. We cut out unnecessary acronyms (of which there are many in our field!) and we encourage simple, effective communication both internally and externally.

Exude enthusiasm

Attitude determines direction, and enthusiasm is infectious.

As a people business, if we don’t have the right attitude, then how can we expect our team to do the same? We need to lead by example and exude enthusiasm. This doesn’t necessarily mean strutting through the office giving high-fives every morning, but it does mean that we carry a can-do attitude to everything we do.

If one of our team wants to push us into a new sector, or technology, then why not?

If a client of ours comes to us with a unique challenge, we’ll more than likely take it on.

Keeping motivated and enthusiastic about the day and week ahead means it’s easier to get out of bed in the morning to come into work and spend time doing rewarding tasks with our colleagues. Hopefully that enthusiasm turns into the right attitude across our team.

Absorb all influences

Consulting engineering within the construction industry is a highly complex arena in which to work. There are competing drivers from different members of the team, and we are expected to negotiate this environment to deliver our best service. This requires us to understand design decisions which may affect other engineering disciplines, buildability, or affordability of particular solutions.

A good consulting engineer learns where their work fits into this by listening to, and learning from, all influences. We encourage our engineers to attend multi-disciplinary design team meetings and listen to other engineers discussing their design. This improves cross-discipline collaboration.

We also try and operate a flat structure within DFC. Whilst there are inevitably going to be more senior members of the team, opinions and input are welcome from all members. Different backgrounds and experiences offer different viewpoints, and diverse views, opinions and solutions are welcomed here at DFC.

On this topic, questions are welcome here, and it is OK to not know the answer if you have never done something before. Our team are encouraged to ask questions, probe, offer opinions, learn, and develop from one another by absorbing all influences.

Nurture those around you

This quote links very well with the message from Simon Sinek, who says that ‘leadership is not about being incharge, leadership is about taking care of those in your charge’.

This is at the forefront of how we run DFC. We recognise that we are our team, and we strive to take care of our team. We do this by:

Operating a no-blame culture – Mistakes happen, we are only human. How we are judged is how we recognise them, how we fix them, how we communicate them, and how we learn to not make them again. Our no-blame culture means that we encourage transparency and asking for help. We encourage honesty, and we encourage our team to drop what they are doing and give help to colleagues that need it. It will be reciprocated.

Encouraging a feedback culture – We’ve all worked at organisations where feedback is saved up for a once-a-year uncomfortable meeting with a line manager. We don’t like that. We prefer ongoing communication between each other. We talk about what went well in a meeting, how things were presented well, or how they could have been improved. We seek feedback on our written work, we undertake regular design reviews. It takes some getting used to, and feels a little raw at first, but ongoing feedback breeds trust and respect and aims to get our team comfortable with working with each other.

Promoting on merit – We don’t have promotion windows. We don’t have formal interview panels where a team member has to present their case for promotion. We meet very regularly and discuss how our team members are getting on. We set targets with them and work with them on improving areas of weakness and encouraging areas of strength. Most of the time we promote one of our team long before they ask about it, because we can see the individual’s development and impact long before they do. We like promoting on merit, it feels nice to offer unrequested rewards and encourages self-growth without having to negotiate red tape.

Allowing progression – We do not operate a formal hierarchy in an office environment. We would not block a promotion because there wasn’t a role for that individual. We’d love a team of high-fliers, and we aren’t going to block someone’s way and risk them leaving the business because their promotion didn’t fit onto an organogram or hit the quota for the number of Senior Engineers. We’re an organic team that our team can progress within.

Stay close to the coal face

Metaphorically the coal-face is where the work gets done. It’s where we started our careers working on projects day-to-day, interacting with teams, clients, developers, and other engineers. It’s what we still do to this day. One of DFC’s strengths is that we as business owners and Directors are still involved in projects.

Whilst our roles will inevitably involve more commercial, HR, financial and operational decisions, we still enjoy engineering and problem solving. We remain contactable, our mobile numbers are available for anyone in the team, and external clients, to ring us directly. We work in the same office as our team, not in a segregated corner office where the ‘management’ sit. We have lunch together, we remain approachable, we engage with all members of the team on a regular basis.

In our world, technology moves fast and construction methods and materials are always changing. If we spend too much time away from the ‘coal face’ we get rusty, and that means we aren’t at the forefront of our discipline. We don’t want that to happen, which is why we aim to keep close to the coal-face.

Retain a sense of fun

“Build a company that we would want to work for” has always been the mantra.

We have all spent time at large multi-disciplinary organisations and they have given us all a wealth of experience in carving out our careers as engineers and leaders. Whilst the majority of our careers we will look back on favourably, there are also lessons to be learned along the way that we do not want to repeat inside our own business.

One of the things that I try and do is not to take myself too seriously and retain a sense of fun in our organisation. We’re building a team and it shouldn’t all be about work. You’re at work for a large proportion of your day/week/month so it needs to be fun, right? We encourage fun.

We have regular coffee breaks, both in-person and virtual. We have team socials. We have team BBQs. We often finish early on a sunny Friday, because, why not?

Our team rides coast-to-coast on mountain bikes and up steep mountains in Europe, they compete in high-level sport. They jump out of planes. They hike up mountains. They build and paint models. They renovate properties, ride motorbikes and drive on race-tracks. They commit themselves to friendships in church groups, do stupid stuff with their kids, and visit Michelin-starred restaurants. They have dogs, both big and small. They travel around the world and absorb all influences. Sound familiar?

All of this is encouraged, because we’re a people business, and being unique people is fun.

Appreciate the wonderful area that you work in

This could be interpreted a number of ways, but for me I take this as the appreciation that we work within the built environment. There are many career options in which people do not get to see the fruits of their labour rising around them and shaping their world.

As Engineers in the built environment, we are lucky that we get to see the buildings we work on rise out of the ground (or in some instances, into the ground!). We work on delivering homes for families and schools for our children. We get to watch our favourite teams play in the stadia we helped to design. We get to see our favourite musician or band play in the arena or theatre we were involved in. We get to fix problems that directly affect people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. We get to go inside and walk around something we have spent months working on, that we have only previously seen on a 2D drawing. We get to save old, dilapidated buildings and help rescue them from demolition. We get to point at buildings and tell our friends and family that it was ‘our project, we worked on that’. It gives me a lot of pride to see buildings I have worked on being used by others, making people safe, happy, and bringing people together under their roofs.

Be honest

This one doesn’t take much explanation. If you’re not honest, you’ll always get caught out. Always. Honesty is always easier to uphold than dishonesty.

This is why we encourage honest behaviour and communication both internally and externally.

We can do this because we have a no-blame culture, honesty breeds trust, and trust builds relationships.

This is DFC.