Bant Breen:
Stephen is the Principal and Founder of SF Mayer, which is a company that focuses on engineering, architecture, and planning. Tell us a little bit about what you guys are working on today?
Stephen Mayer:
I work largely with engineering firms, and that are working in that sector. It’s all the infrastructure that people would be familiar with rail and transit systems, airports, roads, bridges, and ports. In the United States, we have let those go for many years. One of the anticipations Americans have is, when are we going to get an infrastructure bill? When are we going to deal with some of these issues that have been around for quite a long time? In fact, if you look at the American Society of Civil Engineers, I think they’ve given the infrastructure at best, probably C, or C+. We need a long-term, consistent program, to get behind it to start bringing all of our infrastructures up to world-class standards.
Bant Breen:
If you were to kind of prioritize some of those things, what would be some of your big priorities in terms of infrastructure today?
Stephen Mayer:
I think some of the mobility and let’s look at mobility largely from a road standpoint for a moment and also be thinking about how autonomous vehicles are going to maximize the use and the capacity, if you will, of those roads. You’re going to see a lot more user finance, which is totally being expressed lanes, managed lanes. Mobility is going to be important for us and it has been for a long time, but the ability to move people and goods much more quickly is critical. Also, we’ve got a lot of fine airports, but they all need expansion modernization. You’re going to see a lot of focus there and when you think about e-Commerce and the whole gig economy, broadband Wi-Fi, improving our physical infrastructure that moves people in goods, those are a big focus, those are big focus areas.
Bant Breen:
Tell me, this has been a rough year for everybody out there. There’s no doubt that the pandemic is challenged everyone’s life and they’re thinking. What’s been giving you joy in your work?
Stephen Mayer:
What gave me joy right now was work and still teaching. I teach four courses, I teach Capstone strategy, class, and MBA, I teach international management, and I do a technology transfer class. Now I’m also doing this professional services, marketing. That’s one. Number two, in the face of all of this pandemic, we’re doing a lot of zooms and no presentations. I do a lot of coaching presentation teams. It’s all done virtually now. When firms win work, and when a client of mine wins work, that gives me great joy. Writing, like I said, both the strategy book as a poetry book has given me joy right now. It’s a challenge. There’s no doubt about it. I think all of us it’s sort of becoming masters, if you will, of zooming and doing the sideline online work. It’s interesting because so many of the professional services, some of the winning themes come out of the relationships you build with your customers and your clients. That’s a bit of a challenge when you’re doing it when you’re remote, infected with the number-one success factor for engineering firms. When I looked at I did some Ph.D. research on this, the number one factor out of 25 was the relationship they have with their customers. That’s a challenge to build that relationship when you’re not getting face-to-face.
Bant Breen:
Stephen, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back.
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