What A small / BIG World We Work In

“What can we do to help your business succeed?”

On October 26, 2012 CBA (Critical Business Analysis) held their first Client Advisory Board (CAB) meeting for the sole purpose of supporting our clients to the best of our ability. Very simply, we wanted to find out from our core clients, “What can we do to help your business succeed?” There were in excess of 30 people in attendance which, for the inaugural meeting, was a fantastic turnout.

The first guest speaker was one of the two original founders of the Primavera products,  Dick Faris.  As always Dick provided an update on where Oracle was headed with the product as well as my favorite, “Dick’s Picks for 2013”. I always enjoy listening to Dick speak, so much so that I came to the meeting on my day off and as expected, his presentation was well worth coming in for. The ultimate compliment of the day I think came from Dick himself, he congratulated CBA for initiating the Client Advisory Board and complimented those companies in attendance for stepping up to help CBA with the guidance they were looking for.

Following Dick’s address, CBA then presented a little background: Who and what we are, how we started, brief summaries of CBA as well as employee histories and finally CBA goals and challenges over our 27+ years of business.

The floor was then turned over to our new Advisory Board members which are a diverse segment from several industries. As conversations started by one company after another there were brief exchanges of how the tool is, other software interfaces (if any) and finally the product data output and how it is used. As CBA requested there were also issues brought forth to document for future resolution. But the most relevant thing to me was that one conversation after another seemed to spark interests between the board members on the different uses and the prospect for the resulting output that users were achieving. That spark lead to the enthusiasm  for just what being part of this board could do for their own issues as well as potentially finding resolutions from amongst the peers in the group or ultimately by guiding CBA towards not only resolving their issues but providing a knowledge base to tap for future needs. Business cards were exchanged during lunch with much interest shown for several conversations to continue individually outside the meeting.

As the meeting came to a close, I also found it very enlightening to hear so many positive comments voiced by board member after board member regarding the consistent dedication, extreme knowledge and overall willingness to step up to the plate ‘no matter what’ to help our clients meet their deliverables. It was very nice to hear that my fellow colleagues at CBA are so well thought of! I guess I knew it deep inside because when I have an issue, I look to CBA internally for support first and find that I very rarely have to go beyond our team for an answer. The accolades to CBA support employees echoed round the room confirmed that not only to me but to all in attendance. I look forward to working with this group as well as being a part of what it can become going forward.

One additional perk for me in attending this meeting was the collection of past and current supervisors that I had or am working for. I selfishly asked them for a photo as I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the opportunity to have so many in one room at one time again.

From left to right: Todd Haberland – DTE Manager, Nuclear Support, Projects and Contract Management (formerly from Davis Besse, 5 consecutive Davis Besse Outage assignments), Bob Ferris * – CBA (currently assigned as my lead at Fermi 2), Don Monteleone* – CBA, President, John Gordon* -CBA, CEO, Chuck Wolfe* – DTE Manager Nuclear Projects and Mods Fermi 2 (current DTE Manager), Ed Rimpley – Middough Inc., Senior Major Projects Manager (2 past assignments, one at AVL North America and one for Giffels and Associates), and Bob Locurto* – URS Vice President, DTE Alliance Program (current contract manager under the DTE Alliance)

So simply put, I currently work for 5 (* noted) of the 7 gentlemen in the photo below. And people wonder why I’m always so busy…. So now ya know!