2 min read December 2022 — Colliers Engineering & Design has doubled revenue during the last two years, said President & CEO Kevin Haney. By being in North Jersey and close to New York City, the outlook for the company also could not be better, he told Invest:. The two main challenges are the workforce shortage and the red tape at the government level to get things approved and moving forward.
What have been the highlights and successes for Colliers Engineering & Design over the past 24 months?
The key highlight has been the stellar growth that we’ve been able to accomplish as part of Colliers International. We doubled revenue through acquisitions as a company in less than 24 months and increased our revenue by about 25% organically in addition to that. The growth has been amazing.
How has the demand for your services changed in the last two years?
As the world progresses, there’s been a significant focus on renewable energy. There is also a big push for infrastructure, roads, bridges and so on that has continued to keep a significant influx of new work for us. The brick-and-mortar retail space and office space work is status quo. The newest trend that’s happening most recently is the impact on single-family homes as a result of interest rates and inflation rising. That is having an impact on segments of our business. But what makes us so successful is how diverse we are, not only in what we do but also where we are working. We’re doing business in hot markets like Texas, Colorado, the Carolinas and Florida. So, an impact to a portion of our work in one area or market is usually compensated by other areas of our business.
How have the supply chain issues affected your operations?
The supply chain is not affecting us internally in terms of our workload. We don’t do construction. We’re consultants, architects, engineers, designers and surveyors. So, the supply chain as it relates to us performing our services to our clients hasn’t affected our world. Where the supply chain has affected us, is as we make acquisitions and open up new offices, we have to change and add technology like computers and servers. That’s where we’ve seen some pretty significant delays. We’ve also seen delays where our vehicle fleet is concerned. We currently have a fleet of about 500 vehicles and I believe that right now, we are short by about 100.
What technological innovations are you integrating into operations?
The key technology from a geospatial science perspective is drones. But what separates us from our competitors is our ability to deal with the data management side of things. As technology grows it creates a huge amount of data. The challenge is how to handle and process that much data. We have a team of in-house programmers in our company who have developed proprietary ways to use off-the-shelf products to process and analyze that data and generate a deliverable faster, quicker and better than our competitors.
What are the most pressing needs as it pertains to New Jersey’s infrastructure?
The most pressing need is just processing and releasing monies from the infrastructure bills. In the New Jersey marketplace, there are a significant number of regulatory agencies that work independently. It hampers you when there is a project coming up and you have the funding in place but the different regulatory agencies, and the divisions within those agencies, that would be involved in your project, don’t communicate well with each other. As a result, the timeline between getting things approved to getting shovels in the ground can be a significant delay to the residents of New Jersey who want to see the fruits of what the infrastructure bills are in place for.
What is it like to hire the talent that you need at this moment?
Maintaining a full workforce is extremely difficult. There’s a war for talent going on. We do a good job of hiring people but at any given time, we still may have 400 job openings due to our growth. What’s easier for us is that we have 70 locations throughout the country and we can hire people in many different geographies to accomplish the tasks we need. The pandemic taught us how to perfect working remotely, so we might have a person in the Midwest with the knowledge or credentials needed for a job in the southeast—and it works. There is a significant labor shortage throughout our industry so this challenge is not going away any time soon.
What is the outlook for the North Jersey market over the next three to five years?
From a market perspective, North Jersey has always been strong for various reasons. One of them is its proximity to New York City, which is a strong economic driver and another is redevelopment opportunities. No matter what happens in the economy, North Jersey is still positioned to be one of the strongest geographies to be in.
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