“An infinite arc of success requires stewardship, purpose, and a relentless focus on people.”

1. Mike Carragher, CEO of VHB

What does it actually take to build a firm that lasts generations—not just decades?

Mike Carragher has lived that question. As the leader of VHB, one of America's best-managed private firms, Mike took the stage at the ElevateAEC Conference to pull back the curtain on nearly 50 years of intentional growth—from a small shop navigating the savings and loan crisis to a purpose-driven organization that keeps getting stronger with age.

This isn't a story about surviving. It's a story about building something worth handing off.

In this episode, Mike breaks down how VHB has stayed disciplined about the long game — balancing short-term performance with long-term viability, developing leaders before they're needed, and embedding culture, strategy, and technology into the firm's DNA in ways that actually stick. If you lead or own an AEC firm and you've ever wondered what separates good companies from generational ones, this episode is your roadmap.

Key Takeaways:

1. Cultivate a clear purpose and core values to unify teams and drive innovation—firms with purpose retain talent and outperform competitors.
2. Balance short-term goals and long-term strategy; success depends on conscious growth, not reactive decision-making.
3. Stewardship is central; empower employees as owners, fostering commitment to leave the firm stronger for the next generation.
4. Continuous strategic planning and leadership development enable adaptability, resilience, and foresight—essential for multi-generational success.
5. Engage employees at every level; inclusive collaboration and open feedback enhance strategic vision and make adopting technology seamless.

All this and more on this episode of the Zweig Letter podcast.

Mike Carragher is the CEO of VHB, a leading generational engineering and consulting firm grounded in long-term vision and employee stewardship. As VHB’s first non-founder president, Mike has guided the company through significant growth, technological transformation, and a celebrated culture, positioning VHB as a model for multi-generational excellence in the AEC sector. He is renowned for his collaborative leadership, commitment to inclusivity, and active engagement within industry organizations.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. VHB Website: https://www.vhb.com
2. Zweig Group: https://www.zwieggroup.com
3. Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (Envision): https://sustainableinfrastructure.org/envision/
4. Zweig Group & ElevateAEC Conference
5. Connect with Randy Wilburn on LinkedIn

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Architecture with Heart - Carley Chastain

From Specs to Stories with Cherise Lakeside

Master Builders Reimagined: KP Reddy Explores AI, Integration, and Future Design Leadership

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Welcome to the Zweig Letter Podcast. I'm Randy Wilburn.

Today's episode comes from a special series we recorded

at Zweig Group's Elevate AEC conference in San

Antonio, Texas. For those who aren't familiar with

Elevate AEC, it's Zweig Group's annual

gathering of AEC industry leaders.

3 days of keynotes, breakout sessions,

awards, and candid conversations about the future

of architecture, engineering, and construction.

The content we captured was exceptional, and we wanted to

share it with a wider audience. So whether you're listening to

a keynote address or a breakout session, you're

getting insights from the people shaping the industry.

And if you want to learn more about attending a future Elevate

AEC conference, visit

zwieggroup.com. Now let's

dive in. Welcome

to the Zweig Letter Podcast, putting

architectural engineering planning and environmental

consulting advice and guidance in your ear. Zweig

Group's team of experts have spent more than 3 decades

Elevating the industry by helping AEP

and environmental consulting firms thrive. And these

podcasts deliver invaluable management,

industry, client, marketing, and

HR advice directly to you free of

charge. The Zweig Letter Podcasts,

elevating the design industry one episode at a time.

To get us started today, I am honored to introduce our opening keynote

speaker, Mike Carragher, CEO of VHB, a generational

company with a long-term mindset. Mike

is a visionary leader with a passion for

elevating not only VHB but the entire AEC

industry. As VHB's first

non-founder president, Mike has steered the company through a

transformational period of strategic strategic growth, geographic

expansion, and technological advancement. Known for his

personable style and enthusiastic pursuit of excellence, Mike

inspires VHB's diverse team to continually raise the bar

by embracing new technologies and finding innovative solutions to their

clients' complex challenges. Mike is

active in numerous professional associations, including the ACEC

Research Institute, where he is the outgoing chair. That's where I met Mike,

and I'm thrilled to have him kick us off on our big

day of celebration. So please help me welcome Mike Carragher to the

Elevate stage.

Good morning, everybody. Everybody up and rolling?

I'm on East Coast time, so I've been up

coffee-loaded, ready to go. So it is really, really fun to

be here today. Yesterday was such a great day

of all the pieces that kind of, if you think about how they all weave

together, that is kind of, you can look at it as like, oh my gosh,

there's technology, there's culture, there's kind of mindfulness

elements, there's the systems I'm using. What I

wanna do today is kind of walk you through,

it was interesting when I was asked to tell the VHB story

and kind of what we've learned to, about ongoing kind of

success. And as I was listening yesterday, I'm

like, it is all those things and they can feel like they're a disparate array

of items. But if you

take Lin Wong's guidance and kind of step back and go

slow to go fast, you can do some pretty

amazing things. And that's what the founders of

VHB, started, and I've had the

opportunity to kind of continue to build on that. So what I want

to do today is I feel like

I— it was pretty daunting to try to think of how do you tell the

whole story. So I come to you today,

and I stand here today really as a

steward, an earnest steward of VHB's long

ongoing legacy of success. So steward

and stewardship and the idea of legacy and

ongoing— I, I loved the infinity symbol that was flying around.

Um, that's what we spend a lot of time

thinking about at VHB. We're a company, kind of a

partnership, really committed to a long arc of

success and ongoing viability with a goal of

making sure each of us leaves the company better than we found it.

So I stand here kind of proud of that legacy and just, just give you

a few snapshots of kind of what that means or how that plays

out. Is

clickers— there we go. So

VHB has been around for 49 years and it really has

been this kind of ongoing, constantly upward

trajectory. And we've gotten there by avoiding

short-term thinking and really just focus on kind of

conscious growth and viability. And this concept

of the last 5 years of kind of thinking about it as an infinite

arc of success, and what would you do if you were creating an infinite arc

of success? And, and that term kind of came out of the,

the Simon Sinek book. Of, I think it's 2021. If you get a chance to

read it, it's really good. And we're a company that's

really proud of this idea of being constantly

and consistently recognized as the best place to work, but not just the best place

to work, but a place that's constantly pushing the

boundaries on technology, about doing amazing things for our

clients, about being recognized for our culture, about

creating an inclusive place for all our people to come together. To do

really great things. And then this last year being recognized,

you know, as one of the best-managed private companies

in America. I'll come back to that in a little bit. And

I come to you with this kind of just

humble confidence of what our people say

about us. This really is a team element. Survey— or excuse me,

Culture Amp, who does our internal surveys of our people, every year for

us. They've come back to us, and we, we kind of set a benchmark of

top quartile of all service professional

services companies, not just our industry here, but professional services.

And, and they're kind of amazed at the constant level of engagement

that we get, you know, from people being willing— first, to being willing to

take it, and then the items that really kind of focus

around Driving engagement and unbelievably proud to say

92% of our people actively say they're proud to work for VHB,

you know, and an incredible number recommend it as a great place to work

to friends, carriers, colleagues. I mean, this is why you put these

things together and it's why, like I said, I was really

kind of excited to talk about our story

because it is a story. It's an ongoing effort. It is something that you

can't race through, but it is really built on taking the

long-term view. And through it all, it's a

quest about balance.

It's the idea of balancing short-term and

long-term thinking, always kind of finding the right balance of those,

recognizing that you need to keep them in balance.

Balancing kind of focus on our people

as well as strong business performance. Again, finding that

right balance. If one gets out of balance, things are really hard to, to

regain. And then this idea of even just in your ongoing

element of business, making sure you're delivering the business plan, but you're

also advancing the strategic plan at the same time. All these

elements need to come together, but I'm getting ahead of myself 'cause

I know it's been interesting learning about new firms here. So if some of you

don't know VHB, VHB, we've been around since

1979. We focused on the East

Coast, and, and there's a reason, and I'll tell you about that later, so far.

Um, but we're really a group of

2,200 passionate professionals— engineers, planners, scientists,

designers, technologists— who are really committed to this

idea of inspiring our people, partnering with our clients and

communities to create a sustainable future. That idea of

really having a purpose drives so much of what we do.

And then this best-managed company, uh, like I said, wasn't

something I even realized existed until about 2 years ago.

But Deloitte and the Wall Street Journal look across

privately owned companies in excess of $250 million in annual revenue,

and they come in and You know, they interview, they

deep dive interview your entire leadership team. Then they want all kinds of

information. They ask, and they're grading you on strategy,

execution, culture, governance, financials.

And to be one of only 2 or 3 engineering firms in that group that

they chose this year was really a proud moment for VHB. And

like I said, it was kind of, it made everybody in the company kind of

sit up even straighter and be really proud that we've kept all 5 of those

items in balance. So at VHB, what

we do is we work for transportation agencies,

real estate industry, institutions, colleges, universities, hospitals,

the energy industry. Um, we do work with the federal government,

not at a large scale, kind of USDOT, National Park Service,

Fish and Wildlife, and then state and local government. And for them,

We're constantly thinking about how do you weave together mobility,

community enhancements, environmental stewardship.

And so we're really trying to weave those services together if we built them out.

So the VHB story

started in '79, and there's a, there, it's like you can

almost see if you look at VHB's performance over the years. You see

this inflection point. So I'll tell you how it started, what the big

inflection point was, what happened there, and

then how it really started to take off. So 1979, 4

traffic engineers in Boston, they were working for

a firm that was acquired. The acquisition went really

bad. They all decided to leave. They were gonna start 2 different companies.

The two young guys told the two older guys, um,

we're only gonna come to work for you if you two get together. You're private

sector traffic, you're public sector traffic. We think you two need to

work together. So that's the four of them put together VHB

and they went about doing traffic engineering and pretty soon

they started to add civil engineering services and they

kind of shot outta the gate. Things were just, you know, it was right

time in Boston to start a firm. So they started advancing.

They, they really, you know, kind of were picking up clients, adding the civil

engineering service, starting to think about how do you think about these together, not in

silos. In 1984, their

clients, you know, only 5 years in, were saying, could you help us in Florida?

And could you help us down in— so that's how we opened a Miami

office. Could you help us in Orlando? Could you help us in

Providence, so we opened offices there. You know, and they kept going.

They were building. They were building their name, building their brand, really focusing

on kind of how to run the company. And then they went to New

Hampshire. They saw opportunity. First time they strategically thought of,

you know, we're being asked by clients up there, maybe we should go up there

and expand that. You know, so they were really hitting their

stride in the late '80s. And as you can tell, I've been

around for a while, so I do remember the '80s. And,

The late '80s, we were just starting to come out of the malaise of the

late '70s, early '80s. VHP was really hitting their stride.

And then in 1989, savings and loan crisis happened.

A lot of other things have happened since then, so a lot of people don't

remember, but there was a time there was 1,000 banks closed

and defaulted on half a trillion dollars worth of loans.

Absolutely decimated the real estate and development industry

in New England. And the majority of VHB's clients

went out of business, went under. VHB had been

growing, so contracts, well, they didn't really have contracts. They knew that

people would pay. So VHB was in really dire straits.

The work had dried up, the financial aspects were in

trouble. Then the bank

called, said, "We'd like to meet with you." They

called VHB's loan. VHB went into a panic,

founders went into a panic. They sat down with their attorneys, they sat down,

you know, with their advisors. To

a person, the advisors and the attorneys said, "You should

declare bankrupt and then just go start over again." And

this proud group of people with really great integrity

said, no, we can't do that. We're gonna

find our way through this. So

they mortgaged their houses, they found an upstart bank

who was willing to take a chance on these guys. They

had to reduce their staff from about 250 to about

140. Again, the work had just literally

disappeared. And they went about

delivering on all of their commitments to all of the clients who were still

there. They started, you know, feeling, okay,

we're gonna work our way through this. And man, they just worked

around the clock delivering anything they could to keep the company going,

to pay their ongoing bill, back bills and ongoing bills, pay the staff.

And they really started to come out of this in the early '90s.

Saying, wow, you know, I think we're gonna make it. And each year

they would kind of check the financials. And then

it kind of hit them at the end of '91, '92, this feeling of

what are we doing? This is like a merry-go-round or a

Ferris wheel, pick your analogies. We put our

heads down, we work our tails off. At the end of the year, we see

if we made enough money. And then we start all over. There's gotta be something

more. Now the other thing that was just starting to happen in the Boston

area was the Big Dig was

being talked about as a potential project. Wasn't committed yet.

Central Artery Third Harbor Tunnel project, biggest public infrastructure

in America's history, you know, at about $15 billion all

in. Every company

companies in the US and around the world wanted a Boston

operation so they could say they were a local team

and get in position to get contracts on the Central Artery project or the Big

Dig project. So everybody was knocking on VHB's door. And

these founders, you know, and the few other people they brought into the

ownership were sitting back saying,

we just went through this absolute devastating situation

in the late '80s. The team around us helped us through this.

No, we want to figure this thing out. We want to kind of

create a more viable company. We really want to

create a company that it's got a

culture and a purpose. And, you know, we have to think about

an ownership model and they really, this is when the

VHB of today, this inflection point,

really started to make this turn. They went through a lot of years of kind

of introspection, research, discussion with all kinds of people in our

industry, outside our industry, and they wanted to find a way to move beyond

just get to the end of the year and make a profit and then

start over again. They wanted to figure out how do you really

create an empowered company

that could go on. And they started realizing

you needed to figure out a way to weave together a purpose that would

engage and inspire your people. You

need to really be able to focus on your

people. Have your people be part of a team,

not owners, employees, but really kind of bring it all together.

and that you had to be thinking strategically.

In fact, when they rolled this out, Rich Hagen, the

H in VHB, he was the president for the first 20 years, at the first

stockholders' meeting I went to in 1999, he pulled

out this cord and the saying

that a cord of 3 strands

is rarely broken. And

I still have that piece of rope on my desk today.

It really hit me, the importance of how do you bring these things

together in a way that would empower a

company to go on.

So that's what I want to talk through, 'cause that's really what

has made VHB into what we are today and why I'm so

proud to stand up here today. So first off, this idea of purpose.

You know, research tells you firms with a purpose, a real unwavering

commitment to a clear, compelling purpose beyond

just a business performance, outperform firms who

don't. In fact, they're 3 times

more likely to retain employees.

They're 30% more innovative.

A rate of return, return on investment of 13.1, which outstrips

the market over the long term, and 64%

more likely to retain their staff.

So this was really important, all of these elements. But how do you

do this? How do you create a purpose? And how do you start thinking about

a culture of innovation and engagement to really

drive success? These are all really good things to work on. So they went

about this. They got together their 15 leaders

and they kind of spent time over the course of a year

thinking of, okay, what is our purpose? Who are we? What are we trying to

do? And they put together, which was

really kind of interesting in the mid-'90s, this was kind of a new

idea, especially in our industry. And they started living

with it. And it's a collection of things. If you really start looking at it

with how we look at things now, There's elements of core

values, of culture, of strategy, but it's made them

start thinking as they live with it. Okay, wow, we have to really be thinking

about our culture. I guess that

phrase sweatshop that's used about VHB, we gotta figure out

how to not act like that.

Securing our employees' future. Well, this is where the whole big dig,

should we sell question came up. That's a one-time

hit for maybe the key leaders of the company, but if you were trying to

secure your employees' futures for ongoing, that's not gonna work. We have

to think about that. Wow, technology. I guess we start,

we have to become better business performers to afford investments of

technology. And we really need to start thinking about how do we manage this

company professionally. So first thing they

went, was core values. They spent a long time, not just the

15 of them, but talking to the whole staff. And they really came around these

elements, which today still stand as our core values.

And this idea of integrity and quality in what we do,

the idea of collaboration, right? Not just communicating and working together,

but how do you really come together to

arrive at the best solution? Not win the point in a

discussion, around a table, right? How do you—

you know, in the mid-'90s, the idea of diversity was,

wow, we have a lot of women coming into our, our workforce at VHB.

How do we address this? How do we, you know, address the different needs and

perspectives? How do you think about people of multiple generations working in a company?

You needed to embrace all of that. So

stewardship, balance, this idea of How do you

balance, you know, kind of your work and home life? In the '90s,

that was the big thing. It was the question. So how do you make sure

you have superior financial performance so you can afford to do these things and develop

a learning and development program that would continue to create

a long line of people ready to take VHB forward?

So then they went to work on, okay, what core values are

that? What's really our purpose or our mission? And in '96, it was

really Okay, we need to be connecting what we're doing with our

communities. This idea of, you know, results for our clients and benefits

for our communities, right? It wasn't about profit, it was

about that at the ultimate. Why do we have a company? Well, we've got technical

expertise, we wanna solve these challenges for our clients, but we wanna do them

with a way that's respectful and understands the positive impacts they can

create on our communities. Now over time, we revisit this,

you know, kind of every 10, 15 years. And then coming out of the

recession, when everybody had their head down for a while,

in the '10, '11, 2010, 2011, '12, we had to get

everybody thinking, no, we're trying to deliver future-focused solutions

that shape sustainable, resilient, and equitable communities. And

that again got people thinking about it, and it kind of

sharpened and changed this filter as we were making decisions. And then

most recently, it was really about this idea

of becoming what I, what I showed you, inspiring our people and partnering with our

clients and communities to create a more sustainable future. This is our North

Star, and our people challenge us if they

feel we're not holding our end of that, which is

great because it helps you focus. It helps people

understand what you're doing. So when, you know, kind of

the idea of sustainability started coming into the lexicon and you know,

around 2000, it was like, yes, we need—

this is the way we've been thinking about what we're doing and its impact on

the communities that we're working in. So we should be a founding member of

the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure and help fund the development of

Envision. And we should be looking at, you know, how to move

towards kind of net zero on, on our projects, on our operations.

But it made those decisions easy because of the filter we're thinking through.

So, you know, purpose, core values,

you know, now they're thinking of, okay, what does all this mean to our ownership

model? So 1997, um,

Rich Hagen came across this book, The Living

Company by Ari DeGoss. It's a really interesting book. It

still holds up today. This idea that if you look at companies

over history, companies who have succeeded for

multiple generations, not just multiple decades, what

do you find? They're companies that think of the company

like truly like a living organism. This idea

of it really is a living organism that, that has to

be able to adapt where people are your core

asset. It is about the people. And

leadership's role is to really think about how do we renew,

not how to remain rigid, and this is what we do.

So the job of leadership becomes balancing

continuity with adaptability and

cultivate relationships, resilience, and

purpose, not just efficiency and profits.

And as you started to think of, okay, well, that That works.

And how would we generate an ownership model like that?

This is what the generational company, which is talked about— and this is the

biggest thing that changed VHB and, and the most common thing

you'll hear talked about, you know, in the halls of VHB— is part of this

generational company and this responsibility of stewardship. This

idea really of all of us and the company being stewards

to leave VHB in a better condition than we found it this idea that long-term

success is a shared responsibility. It's a

shared responsibility across the board to think about this continuous

improvement and to pass on a healthy organization and to balance the

performance of what we're doing with our communities and

our people. So the ownership of

VHB and the opportunity for ownership

really asks you to act like a steward and to constantly

think about these elements of balance. Now, we're owned by about

23% of our employees, but if you look at people who've been with

VHB more than 7 years, it's almost half of our employees. So

people who've been there and kind of understand what it means, and they understand

these ideas, and they find value and

purpose from it. To be part of an employee-owned company,

it's something we're fiercely proud of, and that you're an active working

employee And that the selection process is

challenging, but you have the opportunity

to kind of really build a long-term wealth accumulation model for

you and your family. Because it's not just about our employees, it's actually the

more we think about it, about the families. So you

start to put these things together, a mission, core values,

generational company, a vision, you know, we

revisit our vision kind of every 10 to 15 years What is that

aspirational description of what we're trying to do out

10 or 15 years? And this stays alive,

this idea of solving those complex challenges, differentiating through

agility, innovation, technology, and all we do.

This is woven in and people talk about this. So it's easy to,

to think about, yes, we do need to embrace technology more. How do we move

forward? So these 4 elements give us a basis to then think about

strategic planning. And strategic planning at VHB is,

believe it or not, it's actually a fun and engaging sport. Okay?

And I say that because we've been doing this

for a while. And what happens is you start

to realize, you know, oh, wow, this

idea to just think about getting stronger before wider.

If we're going to be somewhere, let's be all we can be as VHB.

You know, which is why we haven't said, well, let's forget how we populate the

whole country. No, there's great opportunities in the footprint that we are on the East

Coast. And the idea of integrated thinking, you know, and really

working in a collaborative way, context-sensitive design. In 2010,

you know, 2015, we really started to, to— that strategic

plan really called out that technology was going to change the

industry, and we needed to understand what that meant. And

that's informed us and put us on a, a good position. 2020, you can

see we were getting ready to do a longer strategic plan, but we took a

short view in COVID, and then the Pathway to Prominence, which really starts

kind of giving vivid description and bringing things to life. But this idea

of strategic planning, it includes literally

everybody in VHB. We really do

engage everybody. I spend time in each

office every year. And in

'23, when we were preparing the plan to come out in

'24, the topic, the lunchtime topic,

you know, was some advanced reading for everybody, some ideas of what we were

thinking would be important over the next 5 years to work on. But what

did they think? Were we missing something? Did they have another

idea that we should look at? You know, and we compiled all these, and you

can still You can find, you know,

kind of the notes from every one of those meetings on our website, and

people can trace that through into how it impacted our vision

and our strategy, which I'll show you in a second. But from that,

when we do roll it out and celebrate it and engage people,

it's a very active conversation. There's fun events going on around the

company, and then keeping it alive in the language,

the language that I use, the language that our leaders use, the

language that people are all the time celebrating. Every

success at VHB is tied to, wow, look at that

unusual win that we have in the energy market. That's tied to that strategic element

of our plan. So it is a lively thing. And every 2 and a half

years, we kind of step back, we bring together about 50 people

from across the company, we assess how we're doing, any adjustments we need to make

in the second half of that. But again, it gets people excited.

And the other thing that happens during it by doing it consistently is

you're constantly building new leaders

because you're educating them on how to think about short-term and long-term,

how to look out for trends ahead of them, and how should we lead them

into strategy. So by the time you come around,

you know, and you have a strategic plan, you know, Things

like technology and innovation, you know, which we started

introducing as real focus areas in '15, we're

now thinking about how do they, how do we not only address them, but how

do they transform literally the way we do everything? And

this is a common conversation in VHB. And those things that

are really important to the core of what we do, how do we strengthen them?

And what are new areas that we add? So everybody is familiar with why

these things have been happening, 'cause we're always thinking 5, 10 years out and

starting these conversations. The explore part is the fun part because

we get the board and kind of the executive leadership team, which is

about 25 people, together every year, and we start

exploring topics that are way out beyond us.

Which is why when we had our retreat in 2018

on this thing called artificial intelligence, it was pretty

easy to come out and say, okay, we don't know when that's gonna break, We

gotta get ahead of this. You know, we have a Chief Data

Officer that came in in 2019 to help us get

ready for this. So when ChatGPT was rolled out,

2 months later at our partners meeting, we rolled out

ChatVHB. We gave everybody access,

you know, to kind of a safe environment to explore AI,

to explore it with VHB, data in the ChatVHP version of

it, you know what I mean? And just welcomed everybody to start thinking about

this and how would we move this forward. So again,

this whole thing is a constant renewal of how do you get people

interested in strategic planning and exploring future

trends. And people grow up learning these things

and it all then wraps up back to remembering all of these

things have to come together for your people.

Because if EHB— it literally is our people who make us great. I can't do

that much. I'm one person. You're

leaders of your company, you know that. It's about the strength and quality of

your team. So this idea

of preparing them

on advancing their technical skills, on their leadership skills, you

know, on kind of their self-awareness skills to be really effective

collaborators. These are all important things that we constantly think

about and weave in, and you're happening at every level,

and you're constantly thinking about how do you engage your people in this, how do

you create that community and that culture and the idea of all of us

in alignment. It's amazing what you can do when you get people aligned.

You can make great progress. Now,

it's really interesting because this idea of preparing

leaders, you know, I just announced my successor a month

ago, and we were really blessed to have a

number of really great internal candidates.

And as I'm working now in transition with Bill Ashworth, my successor,

the thing we keep talking about is this idea of balance,

right?

Doesn't want to go backwards. That's okay. But that part of

balance is really, really important, and

balancing all three elements of short-term thinking and long-term thinking, balance

between focus on your people and business performance,

balance on yes, we need to accomplish and achieve the strategic or the

the annual business plan, as well as move the strategic initiatives along.

Because it's only if you're doing all of those things and you never

lose the interplay of

purpose, people-focused, and strategically

empowered, it's only when you do

that that you can really have a company

that is just constantly renewing and enlivening itself.

And bringing it to play. And so what they're doing is not just

executing tasks, right? They're helping

make their communities better. We're trying to make our

community better, our cities, and piece by piece

make our world a better place. We have an

opportunity with the kind of work that we do to literally

make the world a better place, the built environment, the places around us, to create

You know, that fires people up. And then for them

to be able to be part of this and feel an

ownership of it. Let me let you hear from some of my colleagues.

Future-focused. We are not afraid to engage

individuals from different generations with different backgrounds at different

levels to give them leadership roles in areas

where they will excel. At some point, they're going to be sitting in my shoes,

right? Right? So it's, it's up to us as a generational company

to make sure that the next generation is trained and ready to lead the company

into the future.

The energy,

the excitement, the vigor, and the desire for a lot

of EHBers to become owners of the firm is

really inspirational. There's added pride in what you do as

an owner. Employee ownership is a big factor of

and differentiator for BHB. It's an incredible opportunity to

really grow with the company. And what I love about it is that

being an employee owner is self-motivating. What you do every day

contributes to the company, which contributes to your own success.

You have this awesome company that leads with intention,

that is so genuine and humanistic, and to be

even considered, you know, it's just like, wow, it speaks to

that alignment. It makes me want to strengthen my abilities

in terms of how I lead. Being an owner at VHB is

not only an investment in the business and the business success, but it's

also in the people and leaving this company in a place that is

more successful for the next generation.

That's why I get up in the morning. That's why

I just— I get the chance to love what I do.

Because of the team that we have. But

this is not for the faint of heart. Like I said, this is an

ongoing effort to create an infinite arc of success

and it takes time to put all the building blocks in place. And yes,

you need to be successful along the way each step. But if you get all

of these things together, you know, and you aren't surprised when

AI comes out or you, you know, you aren't wondering, well,

do I, am I making enough money to invest in technology

or in leadership development? The answer is

you have to do all of them, but you gotta find a way that it

all works together and makes sense for your leadership team,

for your people, and that it isn't just

about your sole effort as a leader to make it happen.

It's about how do you you use your opportunity

as a leader to help make your team better, to help make your

team understand, give them line of sight to

what's going on. And that's why, like I said,

I'm really proud as a steward of this enduring legacy.

And as I kind of step back into the chair role, I'm

excited, I'm so excited for Bill and

for the VHB company to be on the sidelines

cheering them on to take them to places that I never

even dreamed of. Because it's been fascinating as I've

talked to Rich Hagen, our founder, and coincidentally today's his

birthday. When I talk to him about what we're

doing and how we're doing and why we're doing it,

he steps in. I look for him for advice. He's like, Mike, He's like,

I can't give you any advice. He says, what you guys are doing is amazing.

I didn't even— we didn't even contemplate it would go where it

is. And I said, but, but you put these building blocks

in place and you went through the

challenge of working it all through over a period of years and coming

together with this idea of purpose and core values and generational company

and kind of strategic planning just built into our DNA.

And I said, so you must have. And he said, no. He said,

that was aspirational. He said,

I really thought, he goes, I couldn't say I believed, but I

really thought and hoped it would put the company in a place

that it would go on a next generation or two.

I said, well, Rich, because the integrity of you

and Bob and John and the others had,

we believed you and we took this thing and we

ran with it. And he goes, I know, that's why I cheer

from the sideline, 'cause I can't believe where you've taken it. And that's the feeling

I have now. It is worth the hard work and

commitment that leaders do to put things in

place that can succeed for the long term.

That long-term arc of success,

it's aspirational as I look ahead, but

it's built upon the confidence of the team that we have in place ready

to do that. And I'll tell you so much of what I've learned, not

just from kind of my mentors and founders, but at

conferences like these and from peers across the industry, this industry I,

marvel at it, its ability to renew itself, to work collaboratively,

to share kind of what worked, what didn't work. And so for

all the years I've been going to conferences, I just want to thank everybody for

being so open and sharing those ideas,

you know, and I just really appreciate the opportunity today to kind of share

that VHB story. Like I said, it's not for the faint of heart,

but it's amazing what you can do when you get

2,200 people and growing in alignment. So

thank you very much.

Thanks

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