Written By:
When it comes to Our People, Your Success, we believe that it takes two! This week, we’re highlighting pairs of employees whose strong teamwork has been pivotal for our projects, initiatives, and workflows. Today’s Dynamic Duo is Chuck Wright & Nichole Howell.
Chuck is our Innovation Services Director. He’s successfully brought new technologies to market for the past 20 years, solving the challenges of hundreds of clients primarily in the local government space. Nichole is our Project Coordinator Team Leader. She oversees and empowers the activities of Project Coordinators, who assist each of our technical departments with project tracking, data management, and document production.
What types of projects you have teamed up on (or will team up on) this year?
We first teamed up as co-chairs of the WRWorks committee and had the opportunity to put a system in place to serve WithersRavenel by providing stewardship of one of our most important assets, ideas! This has allowed us to collaborate not only with each other, but also with many of the teams across our organization. We have taken on a large and diverse range of projects, including:
- Internal Power BI Dashboards for our PMs and Department Heads
- AR/VR Modeling
- Slope Tool for GIS
- Intranet Update and Rollout
- Unanet ERP/CRM Update and Rollout
- QA/QC Process Updates
- Field Tools for Construction Admin
- ArcGIS/CAD Integration
- Stormwater Software Partnership
What do you enjoy most about working with your partner? What strengths do they bring to your projects?
Chuck: Nichole always enthusiastically leans in to challenges and brings her organizational strengths to all of her work. Don’t leave an un-optimized system just laying around; if Nichole is around you’ll come back and find something much better! She is also very curious, asking why things are the way they are. This leads to the thing I enjoy the most about Nichole she challenges me and others around her to be better. When we collaborate, the end result is always improved.
Nichole: Chuck is a visionary. He not only sees what great things can be made possible, but also how it could all go wrong! Along with his formidable breadth of knowledge, he expertly navigates projects toward their best outcomes. In addition he brings an infectious energy to every day that is a joy to work with. What I like most about working with Chuck is the way he genuinely cares about and supports others to be better and work better.
How do you, WithersRavenel, and/or your clients benefit from this teamwork?
With the help of the WRWorks committee and all of WithersRavenel, our teamwork allows us to help bring many of the great ideas from our employees, clients, and partners to life. We both thrive on seeing the success of other teams when they launch a one of their ideas! We also love to bring different teams together to collaborate on things they wouldn’t be able to do without help from each other.
A great example of this is the Field Tools for Construction Admin project. This started out as an idea from the Stormwater team, who wanted to be able to get high-quality of feedback on their designs once they went to construction. This led to both teams working together, along with CAD Services, to pilot new tools (iPads), software (Autodesk PlanGrid Build), and a process that will soon be rolling out and expanding to other departments.
What is one fun thing (outside of work) that you both enjoy?
We both enjoy spending time with our families and often catch up at the start of each week by sharing stories of what fun things we got into with our kids!
