VanderHawk Consulting LLC

Description

Message from Mat Huff, President: VanderHawk Consulting LLC is an engineering and business consulting firm located in beautiful Carlsbad, California. I formed the company after working two years in the public engineering sector and five years in the private engineering sector. I was able to get first-hand knowledge of both sides of the client-consultant relationship and noticed that there was a general underlying lack of trust between the public clients and private consultants. This was not always the case, but there were definitely tell-tale signs. One public agency staff member told me the joke that he had among his coworkers: "You give a consultant your watch and he tells you what time it is." And of course there are the classic jokes about how many government employees it takes to screw in a light bulb or paint a park bench. My experience has led me to believe that there are two basic causes of this rift in the public-private relationship: (1) miscommunication and (2) consultants caring more about the bottom line than their client's needs. The miscommunication usually entails the client and consultant disagreeing about what is to be delivered and the cost and time frame needed to deliver it. Consultants that care more about the bottom line tend to deliver a product or service that is not of a quality expected by their clients. Asphalt overlays are not thick enough, a water master plan is missing some key data, or inspectors did not thoroughly review a construction site for BMPs. There are many more examples, but you get the point. Corners are cut in an effort to save money. Being a business man myself and having obtained an MBA, I am well aware of the importance of being profitable. In fact, private corporations like mine have a fiduciary responsibility to strive for profitability. That being said, there must be a balance between being profitable and giving clients what they have signed up for. Maybe I'm old-school, but I feel that if you do the best job you can and treat customers like they are king, then profitability and other work opportunities will present themselves. I really think that our "smallness" gives us an advantage. We just don't have all of the red tape and overhead that the larger firms have. At the same time, we still bring a high level of expertise that rivals any of the big players. If there's something that we can't do, we have strategic partnerships set-up to fill the void. And when dealing with us, you are dealing with me directly. Since I am the president, I can make decisions and quickly set processes in motion that may take much longer than when dealing with a project manager at another company that has to go through three or four other people before getting approval. And if a client needs me there same day, I'm there. How many big corporation presidents will postpone an important surgery to make it to a project meeting on short-notice? This is the type of premium service and care that we provide for our clients...just ask the City of Riverside. I believe that all of this has led to a more improved consultant relationship with our clients.

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