Northwest Aerospace News February | March Issue No. 13 | Page 43

Ben Hempstead, PE, chief of staff,
said that the engineers work on proj-
ects from the bidding process, through
design, prototyping, building, testing
and installing. From there he said that
they support their customers long-
term. “When our engineers are doing
a marketing pitch, their name is on it.
Even years later, the customer can call
for support. I got a call from a custom-
er the other day that I haven’t heard
from in 17 years. I was able to solve
the problem … it was an interesting
question, and it took me about five
minutes to review the drawing and get
back to the customer with an answer.”
This business model is not common-
place, according to Hempstead. “There
is a software company in Seattle with
a model of holacracy,” said Hemp-
stead, and added that they get a lot of
requests at Electroimpact to provide
tours of their office environment. He
said it is a good model, because it con-
sists of, “a bunch of individuals who
collaborate together for the success of
the organization.”
Even the owner, Peter Zieve, is still
working on day-to-day projects. When
a new project comes in, engineers have
a chance to ask to be included on the
project team.
Customers may wonder, with so
many engineers, how do projects get
assigned? Hempstead said, “A formal
assignment is if a team of people are
working on selling a customer an idea
or concept, they might bid on the proj-
ect; then it is decided who the leaders
are.”
He added that, “We don’t spend a lot
of time assigning people on a project
— they throw projects out and people
volunteer for the project.” He said
some of the newer engineers want to
volunteer to be a part of many projects.
Electroimpact Robotic AFP System with Q8 AFP
Head, performing a 16,000 tow reliability test.
But they have internal project managers who are looking for a person who will
“climb the fence to do the work,” said Hempstead, describing hard workers with a
desire to perform.
He explained there is a project manager for every group of 12 to14 engineers.
Hempstead said that while engineers can be involved with a variety of projects, not
everyone is trained on becoming a manager or leader. They do follow best practices
and tend to focus on leaders with experience. He added, “We don’t need everybody
to learn the same customer experience challenges the hard way. You don’t learn how
to do this in engineering school; you learn on the job.”
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