Background
A regional civil consulting firm with offices across the Midwest engaged Advastar while pursuing state DOT prequalification in two new states. The firm had built its reputation on municipal site work and had recently begun winning larger transportation assignments, which required a depth of roadway design capability it did not yet employ. Leadership had a published pursuit calendar for the coming year and knew that missing the staffing window would cost them the prequalification they had spent eighteen months securing.
The Challenge
The firm had been advertising for a licensed transportation lead for roughly ten months without success. The applications they received came overwhelmingly from engineers who had supported plan sets rather than carried them to final submittal, and the internal team lacked the transportation background to tell the difference during an interview. A second constraint went unrecognized until we raised it: several strong candidates were licensed in neighboring states and would need comity approval before they could seal work, which the firm had assumed was a formality rather than a months-long process. Meanwhile the pursuit calendar continued to advance.
The Solution
Advastar began by reviewing the firm’s actual DOT submittals with their principal so we could describe the work accurately to candidates rather than relying on the job posting. We then recruited against the pursuit calendar rather than against a vacancy list, sequencing hires so that coverage existed for each submittal date. Two PE-licensed project managers were relocated into the Columbus and Indianapolis offices, with comity applications opened and tracked through to offer so that licensure timing was visible to everyone. Roadway designers and traffic engineers were added underneath them, screened on plan production experience in OpenRoads and Civil 3D. For every candidate we validated a defensible billing rate before submittal, so that each hire could be charged to a project without a conversation at the next partner meeting.
The Outcome
Nine engineers joined across a single quarter, two of them licensed leads. The firm met every submittal on its pursuit calendar and retained the prequalification it had been at risk of losing. Utilization across the transportation group held above the firm’s target through the following year, and the Columbus office has since become the base for its bridge work.