“Weworkwith clients as a team,” he adds. “I always tell our clients the same thing. At first they laugh at it because they don’t understand it, but soon after they really come to appreciate it. What I always say is, ‘We are not your engineers. If you’re looking for an engineering firm, you need to look somewhere else. We’re not that. We are your partners. Together we’ll do great things. You will grow, I will grow. That’s how it works. We’re working hand-in-hand every step of the way.’” “I believe that’s an important thing to state up front,” Haydar continues. “It’s important they know that we’re committed to making them successful. We’ve got their back. We’re going to take care of them. We want the best for them. Because when they’re successful, we’re successful. The reverse is true, too – if they’re not successful, we’re not going to be successful. So we need to work together to be successful together.” A lot of engineering firms take a different approach, according to Haydar. “The ‘old school’ mentality in the industry is, ‘I’m the engineer, this is the way it has to be done, deal with it,’” he says. “We have a different attitude. That’s translated into repeat relationships and also personal relationships. We’ve had lots of clients bring their homes to us. They don’t even need an engineer, but they trust us so much and they value our opinion. That’s the level we’ve gotten to.” Design Works Engineering has similarly earned that trust from a lot of builders. Haydar believes that fostering those relationships is “actually really straightforward and simple.” “Us engineers, we engineer things to be built,” he says. “The builder is the guy that’s actually building it. If we engineer something that is very difficult to build, we’re making the life of the builder very hard, and a lot of the time that’s going to be reflected in the end product. That’s not what we want. We want to make their lives easier, not harder. That leads to better buildings in the end.” “We want our relationships with builders to be top-notch,” he adds. “We have to understand that the builder has experience and we can’t come to them with the attitude of ‘I’m the engineer, they’re the builder, that’s it.’ That’s not going to lead to success. To be successful, we have to work together. It’s just like with clients.” OCTOBER 2022
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