CFO Sees Travel As Part Of Success

<H1>CFO Sees Travel As Part Of Success</H1><H3>By Judi Bredemeier</H3><I>Seattle </I>- Cecile Haw, chief financial officer of NBBJ here, likes to think that the way the internationally known architectural firm views travel has played a part in its track record as one of the 15 best companies to work for in the state of Washington, as named by <I>Washington CEO</I> magazine.

"We've been named every year they've done this, and that exemplifies what we're about, which is doing what it takes for our people to get a job done right," she said. "We don't manage just by the numbers. I have a real strong interest in travel, not just as a financial issue, but as a tool that is critical to our people's and clients' successes."

Haw, who started her career as a certified public accountant, joined NBBJ as assistant controller in 1984 and became controller three years later, when she began taking on travel issues. In 1987 she was named CFO, and a year later she also became a principal of NBBJ.

As CFO, she oversees travel management, which is handled on a day-to-day basis by travel manager Dixie Sheary and Mutual Travel, NBBJ's longtime travel management partner.

Haw's involvement in travel is steady and constant, although it does not eat up great portions of her time, thanks to reliable support from Sheary and Mutual.

Haw communicates daily with Sheary, gets involved in annual planning with Mutual, occasionally participates in supplier negotiations and signs off on final contracts. She participates in high-level airline focus groups on travel, and she always attends NBBJ's annual travel fair for its most frequent travelers, where suppliers are brought in to air problems and answer questions.

Haw's influence on travel at NBBJ-the second-largest firm of its type in the U.S., with revenues of $80 million annually-is more pervasive than the days and hours she allots to travel management.

She seeks to align travel policy and spending seamlessly with the firm's projects and objectives, and knows firsthand (from being on the road 15 to 20 percent of the time) how big a role a comfortable travel experience (or lack of it) can affect job performance.

NBBJ's culture is "maybe a bit unique, since we don't have a chief operating officer," Haw said. Instead, the partnership of nine owners and 40 principals relies on a CEO and CFO.

"In a lot of companies, there's a strong division between finance and operations," she said. "In travel and a lot of other places, that can produce a little bit of pull and tug between what the operations people need to do and what the finance people are willing to allow."

At NBBJ, however, the two largest offices-in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio-are "a real melding of the operational and financial sides," Haw said. "That means we look at travel as more than just an expense." The firm also has offices in Research Triangle, N.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. It ranks fifth in size globally. International projects, chiefly in Europe and around the Pacific Rim, have grown rapidly from about 5 percent in the early 1990s to now account for about 20 percent of NBBJ's business, Haw said.

NBBJ, the nation's largest designer of health care facilities, has tackled projects such as Genesys Health Systems Medical Center in Flint, Mich., and the University of Rochester Hospital in Rochester, N.Y.

Unlike many architecture companies with in-house engineering components, NBBJ relies on partnerships with engineering consultants, a strategy that Haw said "allows us to use the best consultants whereever we are working and stay state-of-the-art."

Because working with consultants requires meetings, that strategy contributes to NBBJ's $2.5 million annual travel budget. More than half of its 500-plus employees travel, and 150 of those are frequent travelers.

The architectural design business is "a hybrid between a service industry and a product industry," Haw said. "On large projects, most clients want a fixed fee for everything, and that includes travel. They are not willing to have an open-ended T&E component. It behooves us to work within their budgets, finding ways to meet our clients' needs and allowing us to make money as well."

That management strategy shows in NBBJ's approach to travel, which includes a flexible policy. "Our travel policy is evolutionary, and we try to live by it, but it is not restrictive to the point of inhibiting what needs to be done," Haw said. It is a lot like the buildings the firm designs: It goes with what best meets the clients' needs and gets the project completed.

"Our firm believes that most of the changes and ideas in our organization come from a bottom-up approach," Haw said. "Because we think our people, and not just our products, are our business, we have confidence that our people know best when they need to meet with clients, how many times they need to meet face-to-face. That should not be purely a finance-based decision, so I don't mandate a policy that just comes from the numbers."

She cited as an example a decision to send 12 team members- from the partner in charge to the most junior people involved-to Alaska four years ago to "hear from the start what our client, the Alaska Native Medical Center, wanted to accomplish. That was a travel decision that really paid off as the project progressed."

At the same time, however, Haw realizes that as CFO, she has a responsibility to keep an eye on costs. "I have a fiduciary responsibility not only to this company, but also to our clients," she pointed out. "That means I have to look for ways to balance cost and comfort in a way that respects our clients' budget concerns. The best way I know to do that is to look for absolute value in how our travelers spend their time, meeting their own needs and the clients' aspirations. Because it is absolutely critical for us to make our travelers as efficient as they can be, we don't go cheap-we go with value," she said.

That means she is continually trying to balance travelers' needs with financial concerns on a case-by-case basis. "We just don't tolerate prima donnas, though," she said. "That's when we have a nice little heart-to-heart talk."

"I like to think we don't have a hierarchy in how we travel," Haw said. "If we do, it's not because of who they are or the title they have. I don't care if it's someone who's a partner or someone who's been with the firm only a year-if that person is shuttling between Seattle and the East Coast and the Pacific Rim, I want him traveling in reasonable comfort, not arriving grumpy, frustrated, unprepared and tired."

Haw said she is "thrilled" over how NBBJ's relationships with Northwest Airlines and Mutual Travel have allowed the firm to provide better travel conditions for its employees. "They help us travel more comfortably within our budget," she said, citing tactics like upgrades. Creative planning, like trip scheduling to allow day-early arrivals or flying an employee's spouse to stay over a weekend when that is more efficient, also contributes to NBBJ's culture of productive travel comfort.