While some may take negative results related to not hitting billing targets personally and as an indication of poor performance, Mark sees it differently. His view is that it’s a gauge of SI’s business health in terms of using the company’s time wisely to make the client successful, which ultimately directly impacts SI’s financial position. Drawing on his experience, energy, and communication skills, you can be sure Mark regularly identifies issues that need improvement. Whether that’s in sales, business development, monitoring time commitments on an overspent project, or even completing special internal projects, this is an area where Mark shines.

Mark brings about transparency to the improvement area at hand, drawing his team in to see the real issue at hand. He then gets them engaged to completely realize the improvement. So whether the issue is impacting client deliverables or improving the bottom line, the key always starts with real and open discussions to make the issue visible. Shining a bright light early, Mark sets the expectation that the work team will take the project and rigorously drive to resolution, then own and maintain the fix.

The 80/20 rule helps to guide Mark in making decisions nearly every day. Following the improvement effort example, Mark would implement the 80/20 rule by collecting enough (80%) of the needed information, then make a decision. He recognizes that there is about a 20% chance that the decision is wrong in some way, but it is more manageable to make a few course corrections related to only about 20% of an issue.

Compare Mark’s use of the 80/20 decision-making rule to waiting for a 100% decision that involves a fully analyzed, thoroughly examined solution that has been reviewed from every possible angle and confirmed with each individual involved before even thinking about making a decision. In Mark’s view, that all takes too long to end up with nearly the same result. Keep in mind that SI is always considering how to best deliver quality service at an affordable cost, and that 20% can make a big difference in getting the client what they need in a more timely fashion, and it also helps SI.

Leading with Technology

Another area of client focus for Mark is understanding that Structural Integrity is known as a technology-rich company. They have a strong history of providing advanced material analysis solutions to extend plant asset life and ensure safety. With an emphasis on purpose-driven investment, Mark added rigor to R&D investment linked to client and revenue outcomes.

At the core of such investment was the addition of a senior-level digitization role to leverage technology across the company and the different industries that SI serves. Consolidating R&D and enabling digital solutions led to the formation of AIMS™, the SI Asset Information Management System.

AIMS is an asset management platform developed by SI that supports various applications that store, visualize, and analyze information for industrial assets. It is used as a platform to deliver advanced analytical tools, online monitoring solutions, and the resulting actionable insights to help customers go from preventive, to predictive, to proactive maintenance while improving the equipment efficiency and reducing the lifetime equipment costs.

SI serves numerous clients worldwide, offering its specialty engineering consulting and professional services to market segments such as nuclear power, power generation, oil and gas, and industries that uniquely rely on critical structures linked to how they deliver value. For example, all power generating facilities, hydro-power structures, data centers, and hospitals would be in this space. In all cases and industries, SI’s solution is one of engineering analysis that assesses the material integrity of static or non-rotating assets and equipment in the environment in which it operates.

The framework of SI’s value for these engineered solutions is their ability to integrate damage mechanism data, coupled with material integrity assessment. They then apply a broad spectrum of engineering disciplines to provide asset managers with an expert view of the remaining life of the system, structure, or component.

SI has been assisting power plant owners and engineering managers with these material insights for nearly 40 years. The company has been instrumental in helping clients understand the remaining life of assets. This insight helps clients know when to run longer and when a repair or replacement of systems, structures, or components may be required to maintain operation. A typical power plant life cycle is 25-30 years for natural gas power-producing facilities and up to 60 years for nuclear power plants.

Standing Tall & Providing Uniqueness

Structural Integrity’s calling card is its technical capability. “Clients know that Structural Integrity is the go-to source for solving their most challenging engineering problems,” said Mark. “They also know they will receive a solid, valuable answer to their problem with SI. We remain committed to their success.”

The SI approach to material integrity and asset management stems from the company’s risk-based approach, coupled with advanced analyses and damage-sensing technology. This technology enables well-informed decision-making. SI has built its reputation on the effectiveness of outcomes for its clients. By pinpointing risk and optimizing solutions, SI helps their clients maintain the safety and reliability of the asset, system, or structure. The SI risk-based approach along with technology make for a unique  expert and affordable solution.

The Right Talent

“Retaining and attracting top employees is how we consistently deliver our top-quality work products,” said Mark. SI has a long history of rewarding its employees well, with good salaries, profit sharing and excellent benefits. The company understands such steps are necessary to ensure that they have the industry’s best.

“Since our founding, the objective has been to hire expert talent,” said Mark. “It is those experts who have made significant advancement in our core competence, Fracture Mechanics.” Within that space, SI assesses material degradation and elevates that to a predictive analytics approach called Probabilistic Fracture Mechanics (PFM). The SI PFM solution, developed by the company’s experts, incorporates the specialty of fracture mechanics into an engineering practice. This is a solution to address some of the most challenging material degradation issues our clients face to predict failure. When coupling the PFM methodology with client data, whether that’s inspection data and/or operating data, they can achieve a level of insight to inform material life.

SI is committed to investing in talent and technology. The focus on talent is expertise and fit. At the core of the technology is an investment in codifying advanced analytics developed by our experts as digital services. The latter serves the business to fulfill its mis­sion to ‘Be the most trusted provid­er of best in-value, innovative, fully integrated, asset life cycle solutions.’

The company revisits the core of its mission to keep in touch with how the business was founded, with focused expert solutions in fracture mechanics, crack growth, the material remaining life assessment, and flaw evaluation. Through the last four decades, SI has honed the effectiveness of these engineered solutions to achieve higher levels of analytical insight or fidelity.

“To achieve best-in-value, we are leveraging technology to lower the cost of attaining these insights. We do this by using sensors, monitoring techniques, and leveraging the smart design of our AIMS platform to fully integrate the solution for our client,” said Mark. “We currently have three active projects involving 20+ monitoring locations streaming material integrity insights in real-time at client sites.”

Structural Integrity’s timing to initiate recently made changes were undertaken during unprecedented times. “Looking back, our timing could not have been more fitting,” said Mark. “We are healthier, hiring new talent and have added capacity to invest to meet our clients’ changing needs. They know that we excel when it comes time to exemplifying innovation.”