Burns & McDonnell’s Greg Graves to Retire at End of Year

Greg Graves, chairman and CEO of Burns & McDonnell and one of the Kansas City region’s most engaged civic and philanthropic boosters, announced this morning that 2016 would be his last year at the helm of the engineering and design firm giant.

Graves issued word of his decision to more than 5,300 employee-owners company-wide today, winding down a career that brought him to the firm 35 years ago and put him at the top seat in 2004. In a news release announcing the move, the company said Burns & McDonnell’s sixth CEO had produced the longest tenure of anyone not a member of the co-founding McDonnell family.

“I’m a big believer in bringing in new perspectives to an organization, and I think it’s time for someone else to have an opportunity to provide their vision for Burns & McDonnell,” he Graves said in that release. “When I took the job of CEO, I made it my responsibility to use this role to make a real difference for our employee-owners and the city that’s been home to our world headquarters for more than a century. I have to say, I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

 Since his ascenion in to the role of chief executive, the company has:

• Tripled the number of employee-owners from about 1,500 to more than 5,300 today, with more hiring on the way: The company’s world headquarters is well into expansion with one of the region’s biggest construction projects, and expects to open that facility in the spring.
• Greatly diversified its line of business, now with 350 services that include architecture, construction, design-build and other functions, and is ranked 17th on Engineering News-Record’s list of Top 500 Design Firms.
• Boosted sales more than 570 percent–from $387 million in 2003 to $2.6 billion in 2015.
• Increased its footprint nationally and internationally, with U.S. office locations up 30 percent and global divisions opening in India and Canada.

Graves has long attributed the company’s success to an entrepreneurial culture that took root in 1986, when the firm became 100 percent employee-owned. But he built on that with his own view of what it would take bring the company to a new level of excellence.

 “Every year, I initiate three words to the employees,” he said in a brief interview this morning. “These are the three things that we are going to focus on in the coming year. If I look back on those, the three I did in my first year were my best,” he said, and they were: Safety. Ambition. Urgency.

“We were good on safety on contruction sites,” he said, “but not world-class, and we needed to be.” Improvements on that front, he said, came so fast they surprised even Graves himself, “and I’m happy to tell you that in 2015, we were a world-class firm when comes to safety at our sites.”

As for ambition, he said, “there was a lot of it around, but I didn’t think enough of it was institutional–ambition for the place itself, first. That’s something I talk about all the time: Make the project successful, and don’t worry, that success will take care of you. If the firm is successful, there’s plenty to go around for everyone, and that goes back to focus on the team and not on yourself, and good things will happen.”

As for urgency, he said, “sometimes you don’t always see people acting that way or talking that way at a conservative firm that does big engineering projects, but I felt the firm needed a sense of Get Better, Right Now. I didn’t want to wait around, because I didn’t know how long I was going to have this job. If I added something, it’s ‘let’s get beter as a team, let’s get on the same page and let’s do it now, instead of waiting around.’ “

The company is moving quickly with succession plans; it said the board of directors would interview a number of candidates  this week, and that Graves’ successor would be known next Monday, Jan. 11.

“I am happy to share that all of the candidates are from inside Burns & McDonnell,” Graves said. “I have complete confidence in each of them and look forward to hearing what are sure to be innovative ideas for the future of Burns & McDonnell.”

That means the company’s well-earned reputation for civic and philanthropic engagement won’t be changing. Again, it is a part of the culture that Graves, almost always in concert with his wife, Deanna, helped amplify during his tenure.

“Deanna and I take our civic responsibility very seriously,” he said. When good things happen to you in this life, he said, you don’t get to decide whether to find ways to give blessings back–that’s a given. You decide how that giving will be done. “Deanna and I are always exploring ways to do more for our town, Kansas City, than in the past,” he said. “I’ve been proud to bring that to my family and our firm. I don’t know if it’s surprising or not, and it’s certainly gratifying, but at the firm, people ran to the aspect of being more involved in Kansas City, looking for ways to give back to our town. And I’m very gratified by that.”