Tell me more about Pro Engineering Consulting.
So Pro Engineering is a medium-sized family-owned business
that offers a few different engineering services.
We work with different architects and contractors
on construction projects of all types and sizes, custom homes,
apartment buildings, restaurants and bars, industrial
and manufacturing centers.
The engineering services we provide
are mechanical, electrical, plumbing and structural.
So think like the utilities of the building
and then the skeleton of the structure of the building
itself.
So a lot of what we do is sometimes on the boring side,
but it's also just helping piece everything together
in the project to support the architect's vision for it.
OK.
Makes all the sense in the world.
Do you all do more commercial than residential?
I'd say mainly commercial.
But we do a lot of multifamily and senior living.
That kind of falls under commercial.
But compared to single-family residential,
we definitely do more commercial.
All right.
And then your role there at Pro Engineering
is business development manager.
Is that correct?
Yes.
OK.
As a business development manager,
what is your part in the business?
What do you focus on?
So I wear multiple hats.
I definitely coordinate a little bit with the project management
team.
But the main goal here and why I was brought on
is to just drive new business and build and maintain
new relationships.
Like I said, started off as a small family-owned business.
We've been in business since 1985.
And there was really no formal sales or marketing team
until I came on in 2022.
Now I just manage a small team of three.
So yeah, I work with project management.
I work with alongside ownership at a marketing agency
that we've also brought on board to just identify and target
new prospective architectural firms
and then go after them through a number of different methods.
Yes.
So you've been with them since 2022.
When you decided you'd accept the position,
and I'm sure most people, we all tend to accept positions
that we feel like we can make a change in.
Tell me about your vision when you took that position
and where it is now.
It's been good so far.
I'd say my vision was to really come in and just help out
and a small business.
I'd been in a little bit more corporatized structure
beforehand where I didn't have as much,
you know, micromanage a little bit more
and there's a little bit more oversight.
And not that there isn't checks and balances here,
but they were just looking for someone
who had industry knowledge as far as kind of just construction
and design went.
I have a background in construction
having actually worked in the field
for several different contractors
and then also a project management position.
So I kind of understood the lingo
and had the experience there and wanted
to kind of sharpen my sales and networking skills.
And when I had met with Ramin, who's
the owner of the company, to start talking about the position,
I just really liked where he was coming from.
Really trustworthy, family-oriented guy,
someone that you just want by your side, he's supportive.
So yeah, just I guess was really inspired to just kind of come
in and try to be a bigger fish in a small pond,
if that makes sense, and just make
an impact in the company's overall performance.
Absolutely.
And so now you are doing podcasting
and you are the goal in podcast and to come onto the podcast.
Please share that with the audience.
I guess a number of reasons.
I mean, first and foremost, obviously, is just awareness.
You'd hope that architects or someone
who'd be in need of our services might come across this.
I think as well as just building your own personal brand
and getting your personality out there brings a little bit
of personality to the company.
Like I said, I kind of joked around earlier
and said engineering is kind of boring.
But if you can kind of show face and allow your audience
to get a chance to feel like they know you a little bit,
that'll definitely help.
And then I guess just if there's any questions that I answer
or anything that I say that helps out
with someone in a similar position of mine
or working for a similar company or a similar industry,
maybe they'll get some insights or get some inspiration.
Definitely.
So I have a background in real estate and commercial.
And interesting enough is you were probably the first
that I've had on the podcast that
is speaking about engineering and consulting.
Tell me what makes pro-engineering unique
in the engineering field.
There's a few things that makes pro-engineering unique.
The fact that we have multiple services in-house
just makes for better coordination and streamlines everything.
I mean, think of the design side of things
before construction actually commences on a project.
Usually there's a general contractor
and they have a bunch of subcontractors.
That's kind of the way it works with architects and engineers.
Architect kind of quarterbacks it.
And there's multiple different disciplines or specialties.
You have your civil engineer.
You have what we do, the MEP.
And structural, sometimes there's
a landscape architect, an interior designer.
You have audio visual people.
The list goes on.
There's lots of parties.
So to cut down on the amount of kind of cooks in the kitchen,
we offer multiple services.
And so it's more of a one-stop shop
when you get to work with us.
The other thing is just our levels
of kind of internal quality control and review.
If you're going to make that promise that you're
going to be coordinating better and have everything
more streamlined, we have multiple levels
of internal review.
We have obviously the experience of our principal engineers
over 40 years.
And we're able to just make it work.
We have definitely a just really good project management
system that allows us to take on a large bandwidth of projects
every month and provide things at a pretty reasonable
turnaround time without sacrificing quality.
I think one of the biggest things in this industry
is the cost of delay.
And you hear from a lot of prospective architects
that we work with.
They say, oh, we already have someone we work with.
Sometimes cost isn't even the issue
on these big, large developments in the grand scheme of things.
But when it comes to being able to just take on the work
and take it on immediately and meet deadlines,
that's where we really excel.
And sometimes that can make the difference.
Absolutely.
Deadlines make the difference.
Saves money.
Makes everybody happy in the end.
And you said the services you provide
are plumbing, electrical, and mechanical, right?
Yes, and structural.
OK.
Tell me about a recent project you've done.
A recent project.
I guess we have a lot.
We've worked on like 50 or 60 projects in the last month.
We're starting to take on some small, some larger.
What about your largest?
Now I'm just being nosy now because I like it.
So tell me about it.
What's your largest one you worked on recently?
OK, some of the largest projects we've worked on.
We're working on two right now that I think are wrapping up
two that I think have been enjoyable because they're
a little bit out of the ordinary for us actually.
Working on a private airport.
It's actually going to be the largest privately owned airport
in the US once it's constructed.
That's been an interesting process.
Just cool to see the ins and outs of how that works
and how the architect laid it all out
and then what our teams come up with.
There's obviously a lot involved as far as controls
and proper just lighting and ventilation and things
like that.
You have airplane fuel inside of a hangar
that you have to ventilate it a certain way.
So I can't get too technical on it,
but myself not being the engineer.
But that's been an interesting one.
We're also working on a private school right now.
We've definitely worked on some schools in the past,
but this one is ground up.
So completely new development, working
with a pretty well known architectural firm
and contractor on this one.
And it's pretty interesting to see all the factors that
need to be considered early on in just the process
of designing a school.
There's a lot that goes into it.
You know, and I never even thought about it.
It's not funny, and I know the audience is going to be like,
duh, but we just go to school.
We don't have any idea how it's being built
or what's going on.
So I could see why that would be exciting,
not to mention the private airport.
We don't hear private and airport at the same time.
Those don't usually go in the same sentences.
But I can only imagine with all the components and everything
of the challenge that would come with it as well,
I guess just to even ask about that,
is that time consuming to have to figure out
because it's so different?
It takes a little bit of time, yeah.
I mean, we have a great team that, as far as the architect
goes, it takes the lead on how he wants everything laid out.
And then in the general principles of meeting building
code requirements is pretty uniform across all
different types of projects.
But yeah, there's definitely a lot of calculations
that go into it, for sure.
What are the greatest joys of what you do?
I would say on a personal level, I
love just making the connections and getting to know everyone.
Pretty extroverted.
So the relationship building side of things is awesome.
But what's also satisfying is when
you get to see the projects actually come to completion
and the client's satisfied with it.
You work on some projects where there's
less of a personal touch.
Maybe it's just some developer who's putting a warehouse
together that they're going to rent out.
But when you do get to work on someone's dream home
or you get to work on a bar or a restaurant
and you know someone's worked hard and taking a risk,
making an investment into starting a business,
and we get to play a role in just the efficiency
and operations of it.
And the way that we help design those projects,
it's pretty great when they get wrapped up
and you get to see that they're starting to operate.
So initially, you said you went from corporate.
And now you're sort of in a family-oriented business,
which looks like they do very large corporate things.
How has it changed you coming from corporate to a family-owned
business?
Or has it changed you?
I think you still have to.
You have corporate clients.
It's not so casual to the point where you're saying or doing
anything politically incorrect.
But when it comes to, I'd say more the passion that you
have for the business, you feel like you're
making a direct impact.
You have a large corporate budget.
You have a lot of checks and balances.
You do kind of feel like just another ant in the ant farm
a little bit, for lack of a better term.
It's great to have a direct impact
on the performance of pro engineering and what kind of
keeps you going is that on the business development side,
being almost, I have a small team underneath me,
but being almost solely responsible for driving
new business, that's what keeps everyone else on the team
employed.
It keeps them able to continue to work for their livelihood
and be able to feed their families.
That's what can kind of keep me going.
And if I'm in a place of, I don't know,
this is getting stressful or I don't
feel like making those extra phone calls
or having that meeting today.
Yeah.
Well, I was thinking earlier, you said the owner.
You mentioned his name.
And interesting enough, in corporate, that's rare.
You don't see the C-suite individuals down there
having a direct impact in the business.
And I really think that that's worth definitely saying
is that this is different.
You guys do big jobs with a family environment,
knowing that the person that owns the business
is still there.
They have an exited.
And alongside of you, there's three other people.
So it's almost really nice to say
I can get top tier service and still
know the faces of whom I'm actually dealing with,
if that makes any sense.
Yeah.
Rameen is great in that sense where he's still very hands on.
I've talked with him sometimes.
Maybe it's two hands on.
Sometimes you have to stick to the CEO duties
and let the middle management handle it.
But Rameen is extremely hands on.
He'll still make it out to a job site.
And meet with the people on an initial kind of sidewalk
when we're preparing an estimate for a project.
Or they need the expert out there to analyze something.
He's in a lot of different coordination meetings.
So I guess that's another thing that I
could have added on earlier when you asked about what's
the difference and what's it like working
for a family owned business.
There's not such a corporate environment
that you're stuck calling, trying to get a hold of them
through the receptionist.
You can call Rameen directly and you'll
have our principal electrical engineer, in his case,
and CEO on the line.
If there's an issue, he'll drop what he's doing
and jump on it right away.
So it's really great to see that we
have such hands on leadership.
Yes.
And it's not even just that now, Ryan.
You're now on podcasts and about to be blasted all over the place
as the business development manager of a pro engineering
and consulting.
So interesting enough, you two are making the same impact.
One thing I think is really cool too
is the fact that you have chosen to do this.
And this is something that you guys want to do.
It's definitely not often talked about topic, right?
Because pro engineering, what is engineering?
And you said something before, and I
wanted to ask you just for the sake of everything
and everyone learning who's watching, you said MEP.
What does that mean?
MEP means mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.
Mechanical is basically in the HVAC,
the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.
Electrical is power to the building.
And then plumbing is pretty self-explanatory.
So yeah, like the utilities side of things.
There's a lot of coordination that
goes into fitting wiring and fitting pipes through a space.
The architect comes up with an idea for how he wants
the building to look.
And yet there's all these different components and things
that are inside the walls of a building.
And we have to conceal them to the best of our ability
and do what we can do to maintain
the aesthetics of the building and also ensure comfort
for someone's work space or especially a living space.
Yeah.
So what's next for Pro Engineering?
And how do you plan to grow?
We plan to grow mainly from just getting the word out there.
We're joining a number of different professional
organizations.
I'm trying to see what role I can play in there,
whether it's getting involved in a mentorship program,
giving back to the community in some way.
There's a lot of great organizations
out there which aren't just strictly
based on networking alone.
We're planning on going to a number of trade shows
this year, multiple different locations across the US.
I'd love to see what I could do personally,
but definitely get Rameen, our owner, involved, possibly
become a keynote speaker at any different seminars or conferences
related to our industry.
And yeah, just continuing to provide educational content,
whether it's just simple LinkedIn posts or articles
with tips and tricks on things to consider
when working on a new project or jumping on webinars like this.
Obviously, this one's a little bit more just about myself,
but we could definitely get some of the engineers on here
to get more technical, and maybe that'll provide value
to some other engineers or the architects or contractors
that we work with.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.