President of TPD, Inc. (Pottstown, PA), a consulting engineering firm specializing in transportation engineering and related environmental and construction services.
By Liisa Andreassen
Correspondent
TPD, Inc., a transportation engineering firm, is no stranger to winning the Zweig Group’s Best Firm to Work For Award and its president, Kevin Johnson, mostly attributes that to company culture. He describes his leadership style as well as company culture as collaborative.
He says that for most everything he does, he learned through playing team sports and believes that teamwork is a requirement, not just a buzzword.
If you want to know how TPD operates, Johnson says to watch a replay of a timeout during the Jay Wright era at Villanova which led to three Final Four appearances and two NCAA championships from 2016 to 2022.
“Jay always gathered his assistants together to discuss and seek input on strategy prior to talking to the team during every timeout,” he says. “He also sought input from the players. Both his direct reports (the assistant coaches) and their direct reports (the players) knew they could provide their thoughts and honest feedback on his ideas.”
The same input is not only sought, but freely offered at TPD. Its culture is one where people know they can openly express their opinions without fear of failure and are acknowledged for making what are often great recommendations. This culture creates an environment where mentoring is expected and supported, leading to an extraordinarily talented and motivated staff.
And, Johnson knows from experience that if you have a great culture, people will want to return to work for you even if they have left for perceived greener pastures or because of a reduction in force (RIF).
Lessons learned; recruitment challenges met.
For example, he shares that during the Great Recession, TPD resisted a RIF for too long due to some beliefs that the cost of training these great staff members who would be part of the RIF would now be a sunk cost, never to be recouped when they went to work for other firms. However, after TPD regained its financial footing and was able to start hiring again, more than 50 percent of the RIF employees returned, including three who are now in their ownership group.
“This was an extremely expensive lesson to learn and even jeopardized the ability of TPD to remain an independent entity, but now we know,” he says.
Right now, TPD’s top challenge is to find people to support company growth. Over the last three years, the company has:
- More than doubled the number of colleges it recruits from to fill entry-level positions
- Tripled its space in their Philadelphia office in the last five years to accommodate the desire of young employees, from co-ops to junior level staff, who mostly want to live in the city.
- Filled five positions with recruiters.
“We also took our employee referral bonus program and put it into overdrive with referral bonuses now up to $20,000 for hard-to-fill positions,” Johnson says.
DEI also plays an important role in recruitment. The company has an active DEI committee that complies with all federal laws. It meets twice a month and to date, it has effectively expanded the pool of candidates to fill positions. The committee:
- Attends career fairs at HBCUs and hosts “Lunch and Learn” events with professional societies at these schools.
- Performs research to identifies the most diverse civil engineering programs within a 100-mile radius of each office so recruiting and “Lunch and Learn” events can be held at these locales.
- Sponsors six Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) chapters and its sponsorships support college scholarships awarded by each WTS chapter.
- Is a named sponsor of a $2,500 annual scholarship awarded by the Philadelphia chapter of COMTO (Conference of Minority Transportation Officials).
Building a winning team.
Currently, TPD is focused on building a winning team to win public sector projects. Despite being an ENR 400 firm and in business for 36 years, it’s still the new kid on the block in many respects.
“Engineers are risk averse which carries forward to those evaluating firms in a Qualification-Based Selection process,” Johnson explains. “This risk aversity combined with competing against 30-40 firms for every project creates barriers to entry; overcoming these barriers is challenging. So, it’s extremely gratifying when TPD is not only selected for a first project with a particular entity, but also when it’s selected for larger, more complex projects for that same entity.”
When asked if there’s anything that keeps him up at night, Johnson says you can ask his wife.
“She’s amazed that I sleep so well,” he says. “We’ve lived through four recessions and navigated two major partner buyouts, emerging each time even more resilient and formidable than before.”
That’s winning.