| recognizing the accomplishments of the area's most significant producers |
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| Dan Morgan |
"I get personal satisfaction of being of service to people. That's what trade associations are all about. I was lucky enough to be selected," he says modestly. Having worked the last 15 years in various capabilities for the two associations, he says the transition was made even easier by Skip Hutton, former long-time president, staying on as general counsel.
Morgan grew up with a contractor father and an interest in politics. When his first job took him to the General Contractors of Kansas Association, where he helped them with government affairs, his career took off.
The Builders' Association and AGC's local chapter are trade associations offering many services to more than 930 contractors and building or service supplier members in metro-politan Kansas City and western Missouri. Services include extensive apprenticeship training programs, labor relations assistance, training for both supervisors and workers, safety programs, a worker-compensation insurance pool and a "plan room" that makes building plans available. Those services, Morgan says, "help put a better quality project in place--and those projects make up our skyline."
He's proud of the organization's growth--it's tripled in the last 15 years--and its proactive stance to try to help contractors and suppliers. Good examples are their minority recruiting and educational programs in which they go to the schools to talk to students about the advantages available to them from the building trades. "We're trying to get kids interested early, let them know we're out there," he points out.
"My job, with help of great staff, is to maintain the high quality services we've already developed and to create improvements in future. We try to anticipate contractors' needs and develop services that meet those needs." Fortunately, anticipating, planning and executing are among Dan Morgan's many strengths.
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| Bill McCully |
Whether he's talking about getting his engineering degree at UMKC earned through 23 semesters of night school classes, adopting two little girls in Siberia four years ago with wife Diana, or creating and building the facilities that robotically coat and house the Air Force's powerful F-22 fighter plane, this is a man who loves a challenge.
McCully has spent his career at Burns & McDonnell. He came to the company as a draftsman in 1976 when there were only 400 employees; there are now 1,300 in Kansas City. The company has many divisions servicing power, water, environment, process design, aviation and other industries.
His specialty is industrial ventilation that has led him, for instance, to oversee Burns & McDonnell's design and build work of the Air Force's high-security, high-tech coatings facilities in Marietta, Ga., which are more environmentally controlled than many laboratory clean rooms. The project won the Design-Build Institute of America's Design Build Excellence Award in the Industrial Process Sector for projects over $25 million. There are additional military projects in the offing, but McCully can't talk about them yet.
What he can say is that he's been lucky, and that Burns & McDonnell has been good to him. He believes the company's success is due to setting very high standards and focusing on the Midwestern work ethic and intelligence. He says he's never had a bad supervisor in 26 years and that everyone has helped him develop his own skills.
"You've got to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. That's been easy for me to do," he adds, laughing. He points repeatedly to a supportive and extremely bright staff, saying that between the people he works with and his clients, he has the best of all work worlds.
Existence outside of work is good, too. With a 25-year-old son, two five-year-olds and a home in rural Jackson County where he can indulge his love of the outdoors, McCully's career, and life, seem to aptly demonstrate his credo: "Aim high. Follow through. Do your best."
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