Building the New Economy

As a result, change orders became a way of life -- as did delays, overruns, and lawsuits. Talk about cross-purposes! Imagine a world in which software companies earned all of their profits by fixing bugs and charging for that service. To this day, that's the world of construction. So it's no wonder that the two sides view each other with animosity -- and sue each other at the drop of a blueprint.

DPR's founders looked at this sorry state of affairs and decided to build a company from a different blueprint. Construction, they reasoned, is a team sport. If you want to build things fast, you've got to build teams first. So DPR uses in-house facilitators to align the interests of a project's many constituencies -- architects, contractors, subcontractors, clients -- before it pours the first drop of concrete. At the outset of each project, it works with clients and designers to define their goals, to agree on a schedule, to establish metrics of success -- even to write a mission statement. As the project moves forward, suppliers, vendors, and subcontractors join this team-building process. DPR is so serious about teamwork that one member of the firm's seven-member management committee devotes himself nearly full-time to the issue.

"It strikes some people as touchy-feely," Woods concedes. "You know -- 'This is construction! Let's just get out and build the damn building.' But we come out of the process with two very important things: a mission statement and a clear set of metrics. As long as the teams stay focused, we end up with a great project. We have to make the job just as successful for the architect as it is for the customer and for us. We have to let everybody win."

The DPR approach itself seems to be winning. And now that the company is in a position to choose which projects it works on, it rarely accepts jobs on which it can't take part in the entire building process -- from an owner's initial statement of need to the final occupancy of a facility. DPR's selectivity is about more than just building teams. It's also about learning. A few years ago, when the company contracted to build lab facilities for Stanford, it was leery of allowing students to have input. But the experience of working with user groups went so well that DPR now tries to incorporate them into all of its projects -- as early as possible. On some jobs, it has spent up to $1 million to build a mock-up of a facility, so that users could do a walk-through and make suggestions. "It helps educate clients on what their people want," explains Woods. "The more you share that information, the better the project becomes."

Of course, better projects lead to happier customers -- and to more business. Today 75% to 80% of DPR's work comes from repeat business. But the company's real measure of success isn't repeat contracts -- it's no-bid contracts. "We pay attention to how much work we get without having to compete for it," says Woods. "That figure is running at 35% to 40% of our annual volume."

Great Companies Compete on Brains, Not Brawn

A visitor to DPR headquarters in Redwood City can't help but feel that he's in the wrong place: Has he wandered into the offices of some well-adjusted software company? People are hunched over computer screens. Rooms are named after dead rock stars: the Janis Joplin and John Lennon conference rooms, the Elvis Presley digitizer room. (John Denver warrants only a phone booth.) There are no walls, no cubicles, no dividers. The open-plan concept has been taken to such an extreme that people don't even sit near other members of their department or team. (Nor does anyone here have a permanent job title. DPR believes that titles create needless boundaries between people and between disciplines.)

"Everybody's mixed together, because we need all the disciplines working together to be successful," explains Doug Woods, whose immediate neighbors work in the departments of business development, marketing, accounting, and estimating. Adds Ronald Davidowski: "I believe -- and we've seen ample proof of this -- that any group of minds is better than any individual mind. Our job is to harness the brainpower we have."

DPR's founders are clear on this point: Winning companies don't compete on brawn -- they compete on brains. Which is why DPR offers, on average, 120 hours of training per employee per year. That training ranges from a 12-hour course on making presentations to a 4-day workshop on problem solving. Last year, DPR began sending high-potential employees to a leadership institute in the mountains above Colorado Springs. By the end of this year, it will have sent 70 people to the institute at a cost of $8,000 per person.