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January 27, 2020

Inclusion awards

Three ACEC Washington firms have taken home the association’s Excellence in Inclusion Award. The award honors ACEC member firms that are champions in advancing diversity and fostering a culture of inclusion within their workforce, their teams and the clients they serve.

Applicants were judged on corporate commitment, workforce diversity and business diversity.

MIDSIZE FIRMS

KBA

KBA actively practices a culture of inclusion and looks for opportunities to reach out and engage small and disadvantaged firms. The company’s engagement practices include keeping an active roster of S/DBE subs and their services, attending industry events aimed at S/DBE inclusion, soliciting S/DBE subs on its website, and actively seeking out formal mentorship roles.

KBA seeks to include women and minorities into its recruiting, training and promotional practices. Both women and minorities are represented in firm leadership positions.

Another way KBA helps promote inclusion is by offering internships to college students and recent graduates. KBA had three such paid positions in 2019, two of which were filled by women/minorities.

In 2018, KBA utilized 18 S/DBE firms for a total of more than $1.2 million, representing 8.5% of the company’s gross revenue.

KBA has a standard policy of offering one-on-one business leadership mentoring to the leadership of all its subconsultants. KBA makes this commitment in all teaming agreements and highlights it in its proposals.

Coughlin Porter Lundeen

This past year, Coughlin Porter Lundeen developed a program around bystander intervention. Learning objectives include promoting a culture of shared responsibility for the well-being of the workplace, increasing awareness of questionable or unacceptable workplace behavior, and increasing knowledge and skills for employees to effectively intervene when they recognize behavior, language or interactions that are questionable or problematic.

The company encourages both formal and informal mentoring, and recently launched a program that supports this by introducing company-funded coffee cards that staff can use to invite their mentor or project manager to coffee. This provides staff a way to engage and take more ownership of their career progression through spontaneous conversation.

Nearly half of Coughlin Porter Lundeen’s engineers with less than 10 years of experience are women. The company-endorsed Women’s Leadership Group determines priorities, gathers feedback, and works to understand how to create a better workplace environment for this large group.

Coughlin Porter Lundeen offers an enhanced intern program that reaches far beyond errands and filing. The firm’s goal is to give interns a realistic and comprehensive understanding of the architecture/engineering/construction industry while allowing them to explore the areas of engineering that interest them the most.

LARGE FIRM

HNTB (Bellevue office)

HNTB promotes diversity through its work with several partner organizations.

Once a month, a group of HNTB engineers from the Bellevue office shares their career experiences and presents on different topics to students from Franklin High School in Seattle and Sammamish High School in Bellevue. This group recently sponsored a WTS field trip that highlighted some of the firm’s major projects to high school girls interested in pursuing this field as a career.

HNTB is active in other groups that advocate for employment diversity, including the Washington chapter of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials, Tabor 100, and the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship organization.

HNTB is committed to diverse representation at all levels of its office in Washington state and throughout the firm. As part of this commitment, HNTB Bellevue has established a senior-level task force dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion.

HNTB offers flexible work arrangements and creative benefits. For instance, several leaders within HNTB allow employees to work flexible or part-time hours with prorated benefits, including health insurance and the accrual of paid time off for vacation.


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