Certification Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 30) INTERFACE CH2M HILL: Managing IT Services Internally and Externally DANIEL MARGOLIS CH2M HILL is an engineering and construction company that can meet seemingly any industrial need. The services it offers touch on wastewater and water resources; transportation; federal facilities and military operations; nuclear, environmental, energy, power, electronics and advanced technologies; pharmaceuticals and biotechnology; manufacturing; chemicals and communications. Given all this, it’s not surprising CH2M HILL maintains a large workforce: roughly 19,000 employees, 1,200 of those in IT. In fact, CH2M HILL has IT professionals not just for its internal needs but also external ones, as its customers see a need to outsource their IT services. Mike Bank, director of business development, said this migration of services can occur in several ways. “We go out and organically look for customers to support, place people with or support their systems on a hosting level or even remotely manage them,” Bank said. “Or we may be supporting a customer for an internal project for another line of business (maybe they’re in the water vertical), or we might be supporting someone else in a financial vertical. It’s the same level of performance — those same systems are applied, whether they’re internally or externally for the company.” This affects CH2M HILL’s approach to hiring in IT. “For our business, given the fact that our people are customer-facing, the biggest factor we look for is relevant experience and success in similar projects to that of our customers,” said Shawn Audino, vice president of business development for CH2M HILL’s managed services group. This leads the company to seek IT professionals who have worked in a variety of industries, Bank said. “We weight an individual coming in who has experience across multiple industries,” he said. “They might be a very good architect, but if they come to us saying, ‘I’ve worked in the financial industry for 15 years — that’s where I grew up, and that’s the only language I know,’ we would take somebody else who maybe had 12 years’ experience across three different industries because they can leverage those different skills. We have so many diverse product offerings, we need to target to every single vertical that’s out there in the market.” Once an IT pro is onboard, the range of industry functions CH2M HILL tackles makes for a similarly varied spectrum of jobs roles and responsibilities. The individuals who are with the company in IT full time span many disciplines. 30 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE September 2007
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