Lambourn Engineering offers a variety of professional services, from designing water systems for cities and rural townships to land surveying.
Dan Lambourn, PE, is the current president of the company founded by his father Gene. "We've always been a fairly small, family company," explained Dan. "For the past 20 years, our hometown has held fairly steady at about 50,000 people. During the past five years, though, we've had a real boom. New businesses are coming, new developments are being built, and we've even attracted a large rail yard which is going to continue to help us grow over the next 20 years," he said.
The new development has had a fairly dramatic effect on Lambourn Engineering. In the past, they would hire engineering interns from a nearby university as office support staff. The interns could handle the telephone service, accounting, and appointment setting under Dan's supervision. "That was a win-win for both of us," said Dan. "They don't teach you about what it means to run a business in engineering school. They teach you all about physics, drafting, and flow dynamics. They don't tell you what it is like to meet payroll. That's what our interns learned here, with us."
The construction boom made it impossible for Dan to keep up with the demands for engineering services. He hired an office manager to supervise the interns and handle his routine bookkeeping. He spent more time in the field and hired two more professional engineers, one of whom was a former intern. Dan also put together another dedicated team of land surveyors to handle the growing demands of commercial clients.
"In this year alone, we've seen no less than eight big-box retailers coming into this market. That's dramatic growth," said Dan. "It is really exciting to be a part of it."
His office manager, Sandi, researched their options to cope with their growing business. She recommended outsourcing all after-hours and overflow calls. Dan agreed.
"I had no idea how many calls we were missing until we turned our overflow over to the service. We often had all three lines busy, but I never thought about dropped calls. With the roll-over service we were getting about five more calls every day," he said. "There are plenty of other firms to call if our line was busy; we were just losing those contacts."
Like his hometown, Lambourn's business is growing. The new engineering staff, office staff, and additional interns have all played an important role. Dan Lambourn is also quick to credit the additional help he's received from his outsourced agents. "Our phone service has played a surprisingly big part in our success," he said.
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