Charting growth: O’Neil widens range
Engineering firm looks to hire up to 100 people in next two years.
A year ago, Hernan Olivas was several months into his new role as chief executive of technical documentation and engineering firm O’Neil & Associates.
After the unexpected passing of his predecessor, Robert Heilman, Olivas saw his mandate pretty clearly: Raise the revenue bar. Explore revenue possibilities locally, including at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And introduce new products while venturing into new markets.
A year later, Olivas told the Dayton Daily News that work is well underway.
He and his Miamisburg-based team are more actively telling the company’s story, especially locally. A joint effort with Wright State University, the O’Neil Center for Research Communication, has been open since September.
The company has about 240 employees today and is looking to bring on 60 to 100 more in two years.
So much work remains. This is an edited transcript of a recent interview with Olivas at his Byers Road offices.
Q: Do you feel you’re hitting your goals?
Olivas: “A year later, we’ve gone through a lot of changes — starting with me, of course.
“The bigger change, I guess, is we have been now more outward-focused. Because we had a long history and a tremendous reputation, we were very inward-focused. Our business was coming to us, if you will. I wanted to add the component of going and finding that business . ...
“We needed a new sales model — people, processes and tools. We’ve got new people in our business, development and sales engines. We have new products.”
Q: What worries you at this point?
Olivas: “As we grow, health care costs are just incredible. Next to payroll, that’s the highest number here. And as you add people, that just keeps growing.”
Q: Are you on your way to your revenue target ($40 million by the year 2020)? And do health care costs make that harder?
Olivas: “Yes we are. And yes, health care (costs) can make that more difficult. It certainly has the potential to make it more difficult.”
Q: Can you name some of your new customers?
Olivas: “One key customer is Manitowoc. They build these big cranes. They are worldwide — a worldwide footprint, big-ticket items, high initial costs, long life-cycles, mission-critical pieces of equipment, which is a classic trait of many of our clients.
“They have a challenge: It takes a long time to repair these cranes. The skill set available for people to repair the cranes is not prevalent.
“Some of the solutions we have are cloud-based, this knowledge model that technicians can access from anywhere, in their language, the same information for users. ... We are going to start with parts and information.
“That’s going to be a longterm engagement with a full footprint of all of our solutions and services. Those are the kinds of accounts that drive this growth I’m talking about.
“Another customer visiting (O’Neil & Associates) today is Equipment Depot.”
Q: Are you more diversified than you were a year ago?
Olivas: “Yes, and that was key. Again, our focus for our vision was to grow the aerospace and the technology footprint. We are doing both of those.”
Q: You’ve brought on a digital media specialist. Is that part of trying to tell the company’s story?
Olivas: “It absolutely is part of it. We want to have a presence. And we wanted to start locally. That was another one of my objectives, if you’ll recall — to grow our reach here in the local area.
“I’ve engaged with the (Dayton Area) Chamber of Commerce, with the Dayton Development Coalition. We’ve sponsored events here and there. We’ve got the ads at the (Dayton International) Airport, and we’ve introduced Kayla (Bradstreet, the company’s digital medial specialist) to give us a presence.
“Here’s the other component that’s important as social media comes to the forefront — our customers are changing. The generation today that buys our solutions and services consumes information differently. And they make themselves aware differently.”