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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 17 M A R C H 2 3 , 2 0 1 5 We had to change in order to stay strong. If we don't change to compete effectively in those markets, we'll be like the buggy whip manufacturing plant. Woodard & Curran 41 Hutchins Drive, Portland Founded: 1979 President and CEO: Doug McKeown Services: Engineering, science, operations and construction management company serving municipalities, industry, utilities and universities throughout the United States. Revenue: $167 million in 2014 Employees: 850 employees in 16 offices and over 45 O&M project locations nationwide Contact: 207-774-2112 www.woodardcurran.com performance lags — and then devise strategies for capitalizing on both fronts. In a nutshell, McKeown says, the reorganization gets back to the company's mission statement and a corporate culture he inherited and embraces: "Give people a chance to succeed." 'We stay strong together' For a company whose mission statement explicitly states protecting the environment trumps all other interests, it's not surprising that McKeown's offi ce at Woodard & Curran's national headquarters near the Portland International Jetport has the feeling of being placed, visually if not literally, in the woods. A wall of large windows off ers unobstructed views of a mixed-growth forest, which, on a cold February day, is animated by nuthatches and chickadees seeking food. McKeown, who joined the company in 1992, says the company's environmental services initially were focused on helping municipalities and companies meet the 1972 Clean Water Act's requirements. Over three decades, those services expanded in response to newer environmental regulations, such as the Superfund law of 1980 that created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries to pay for cleaning up thousands of toxic waste sites across the country. Today, he says, the company off ers an array of environmental services covering everything from transforming brownfi eld sites into usable proper- ties to helping companies meet their environmental, health and safety obligations. e operations and management division alone has grown from one contract in 1992, worth $100,000, to $50 million and 250 employees today. "With good insights from the board, we've tended to be a place where people could grow," McKeown says. e corollary to that, he adds, is that Woodard & Curran's growth kept pace to the point where, in 2007 when he took over as CEO, it had become an $81 million company with 450 employees. He recalls an early lesson in leadership that came out of a conversation he had with co-founder Al Curran, the CEO he was about to replace. "You had the hard job, I've got the easy job," he remembers telling Curran. Curran shook his head and replied, "You've got it in reverse. It's going to be a lot harder for you to grow the company than it was for me to take it to this level." McKeown chuckles, saying Curran's modest retort proved prophetic: By the end of 2007, the national housing bubble burst, triggering a meltdown on Wall Street, the tightening of credit and a deep recession that hit the environmental engineering and construc- tion industries particularly hard. ere would be no resting on anyone's laurels; McKeown faced a leader- ship challenge without precedent. What got him through it, he says, was the company's mission statement, which held up "growth, freedom, challenge, recognition and reward" as important objec- tives that would attract talented people and allow them to excel at their work and, in doing so, help Woodard & Curran thrive. In his fi rst "state of the company" address — delivered in March 2008, a practice he's continued every March since —McKeown says he told employees: "We stay strong together." 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