Since 2013, our business has grown by more than 500 employees nationally. This is a result of a number of factors, including a booming market, increased economic opportunity across the country, a high rate of college graduates, and acquisitions. We’ve been fortunate enough to acquire four firms in the last six years, including Bowyer-Singleton based in Central Florida, Preble-Rish based in North Florida, J3 Engineering based in Denver, Colorado; and Drake Haglan and Associates based in California.

I was a principal with Bowyer-Singleton when we were acquired by Dewberry in 2013 and was with another firm that was acquired earlier in my career. Considering my experiences I recently had the opportunity to speak about acquisitions during a panel at the Western States Mergers & Acquisitions Symposium in San Francisco, California. The audience asked some fantastic questions that I think can apply to a variety of situations related to mergers and acquisitions.

What advice do you have for firms going through an acquisition or merger?

Keep open lines of communication. It’s important that everyone understands the expectations, both on the buyer and seller side of the transaction. Dewberry’s leadership did an excellent job letting us know where we were headed and what we could expect from the acquisition. We were informed from the get-go that the goal was to grow Dewberry’s presence in Florida and increase personnel numbers significantly. One of our goals as the seller was to increase opportunities for our employees, and that’s something we were able to offer them by joining a larger firm.

How should negotiations be handled during this sometimes tumultuous time?

This relates back to communication in many ways, but my recommendation as a senior-level employee going through a negotiation is to be clear about what you want to negotiate, i.e. benefits, salary, paid time off, etc. It’s important that you feel like you’re taking a step forward and not a step back. At the same time, it’s critical that leadership is taking care of employees at every level of the organization. If you don’t want to feel like you’re taking a step back in your career, neither do they.

If you had to do it all over again, would you?

Absolutely! Considering a variety of factors when selling a firm is important. It’s not just about adding people to a business, but it’s also about making sure the firm you’re selling to is genuinely interested in taking on everything your business has to offer. For us culture was very important and that meant not only finding a buyer who wanted to utilize all of our services, but finding one that had the same focus on employees and offered the growth opportunities to our staff.