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Recently I sat down with three of our longest-running employees to inquire about their careers and lessons learned over the years. Their stories exhibit the deep roots that anchor and feed the Hall Irwin team.
As we informed our most recent hire, one must be careful with throwing nicknames around here, as they’re quite sticky. The next long-term employee I interviewed was Nate Sandlin, who has been blessed with terms of endearment like Dirty Nate, Nate Dog, and (more befitting) Nate the Great. He has been at Hall Irwin for 11 years, beginning as Project Engineer and quickly advancing to Project Manager. He’s a wiz with numbers who’s not afraid to tell you how it is, especially when it comes to budgets, estimates, golf, and the CSU Rams. Learn more about him with me.*
Tell me about your career journey leading up to your arrival at Hall Irwin Corporation [HIC] in 2013.
I was born and raised in Colorado Springs and graduated from CSU in 2007 with a degree in Construction Management. I moved to Nebraska for a job as PM for Hagum Construction, but they went out of business two years later, so I moved back to Colorado. Then I worked for Richmond Homes doing estimating for a while, before moving on to a cooling tower company as PM again. I traveled a bit for that job, including to Maryland and Texas, and couldn’t stand the humidity, so knew I wanted to stay in Colorado.
I found the job at HIC through a job posting, if I remember correctly, and interviewed with Rob and Ed Lafferty [our former president]. I was one of the first hires after the 2008 recession, so it was a small group when I started, maybe five or six people. I started as Project Engineer because they wanted me to do land development and I didn’t have any experience with that. But after a year or two I was able to bump back up to Project Manager and take care of my own jobs. I haven’t had the chance to get into our vertical projects too much, but hope to do more of that someday.
What are some of the most memorable projects or achievements you’ve been part of at HIC?
2016-19 were some of our best years for building partnerships with several long-term clients. At that time, about 90% of our work was negotiated, and I enjoyed helping build those relationships.
What aspects of our company culture do you enjoy most and what motivates you to come to work each day?
I appreciate that family has always been valued here. HIC may be on the smaller side, but I’d be working way more at a bigger company, and probably burning myself out. My wife and I love the freedom we have to spend time with our family. I’m able to coach my son’s soccer team and attend my daughter’s gymnastics events; I love being present in their lives without feeling guilty for not being at work all the time. My wife enjoys the company events, too, and is usually the one dragging me along.
I’m energized by the challenges involved in construction that require specialized knowledge to manage well, so any time I get to do that, it's fulfilling. I’ve always liked fixing things and building my expertise.
I also like the fact that my opinions are welcomed and respected at the office. It makes you feel valued when you can speak your mind and help effect positive change and improvement.
If you could go back and give yourself advice at the start of your career, or to anyone starting off in construction management now, what would that be?
Trust people to do their jobs. Too often I find it easier and quicker to just do things myself, when I should take a few minutes to train the people under me and then let them run with it. That helps everybody function better in the long term. The construction world doesn’t work by someone sitting down and taking you through everything step-by-step--it works by learning on the job, so give people the tools they need and let them figure it out. I try to do that with my son, but he never listens to me, even though he’s good at all the things I was (soccer, baseball…).
How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance? What keeps you grounded when you leave work?
Spending the free time HIC affords me to be with my kids. It’s great to be able to leave work at work. That 401k match is pretty great, too—when a company helps you prepare for retirement, it provides a lot of peace of mind.
When you leave HIC (at the very end of your career, obviously), how would you like to be remembered?
“I don’t want them to.” [sic] Ha ha, well, I want them to say positive things, like that I was a fair, ethical person to work with, who “gave a s***” [sic] about what they think. That’s all.
Nate trained me in my first role at HIC, and from my first week in the office I knew he was quality from head to heart. Loyalty comes naturally, he always finds the best possible way to take care of business, and he doesn’t need titles or applause to do the right thing. That’s Nate the Great for you, and we couldn’t be happier that he's chosen to stick with us all these years!
*Nate dislikes attention and hopes nobody reads this post.