Deborah is a Mechanical Engineer as well as the Principal-in-Charge of the AKF Group, an engineering consulting firm that works with building systems such as HVAC, plumbing, and electrical design. Deborah’s main responsibility is to use her technical base knowledge of engineering and use her relationship-building skills to bring new business through the door and expand her company’s virtual footprint in Minneapolis.
Transcript
My name is Debbie Rider. I am a mechanical engineer and so I am the principal in charge of the AKF Minneapolis Office and we are a MEP engineering consulting firm. So do the building systems for in regards to HVAC, electrical design, the plumbing. So it's actually a lot of fun because you get to work in collaborative teams with architects, owners, other engineers. The main functions would be having a strong technical base so good engineering, but then being able to leverage that for business development. So my main role is to actually bring projects in the door and develop client relationships. One of the projects that we're really proud of is Westminster Presbyterian Church. So it's a very high-profile, it's here in Minneapolis, it's a church that they have a significant addition, 40,000 square foot addition as well as significant renovation. And it was a really awesome experience just for the fact that the whole campaign was open doors, open futures. And they wanted it to be more accessible to the community, and then as well is we have multi-family residential, office buildings that we're working on, so you can really see the built environment and how we can directly impact in a positive way. So busy day for me, really starts with a call from a client saying hey, I have a new project and I want you to propose on you know, your scope of services, the fee that you would have associated with it, and then it moves towards project meetings, where we're also all the projects that we're currently working on, what's the status, where is it going? What's our next milestone to deliverable? And then it's in addition talking with the staff on how we're gonna execute. Looking at utilization, who's busy, who's not busy. That kind of thing. And so then the tail end is usually talking about wrapping up on where we're at for projects and as well as like making sure that the fees and proposals that I'm providing earlier in the day, just following up with the client and see if they have any questions, or other additional follow-up that they may have.
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