In today’s fast-changing world, strategic plans that rely on a detailed five-year plan can become outdated very quickly—often as soon as they are published. To avoid this, Merrick focuses on our strategic direction, rather than a five-year plan. This overarching, clear, and concise strategic direction is paired with a detailed one-year business plan that receives annual updates. This approach lets us be nimble and responsive in the marketplace, while still achieving our overall goals and remaining true to the strategic direction of the company.

 

We want our Merrick family—our employee owners—to understand this strategic direction and implement it every day in their work. Together, we can achieve both our short-term goals and our ultimate goal—remaining an enduring and growing independent employee-owned company.

 

Our strategic direction encompasses four elements: the balanced scorecard, focused diversity, smart growth, and long-term employee and client engagement.

BALANCED SCORECARD

Balance is the key to our business, our strategic direction, and our purpose, vision, and values, which were created through input of more than 300 Merrick employee owners. To reflect this, we use the “balanced scorecard” approach to our yearly business planning. All teams develop objectives in these four areas every year.

 

This approach keeps us continually focused on four areas that we’ve deemed important for the strategic direction of our company. In a nutshell, they keep us focused on our employee owners, our clients, healthy finances, and efficient operations.

SMART GROWTH

10% Annual Growth. To stay true to our overall strategic direction of being an enduring employee-owned company, we must focus on smart and sustainable growth. Our primary growth strategy is organic. We have full-time business development staff and seller-doers who are market-focused experts, and we work hard to please our clients and keep them for life.

 

Our strategy also includes an active mergers and acquisitions (M&A) program to supplement organic growth. This program is focused on expanding services regionally within our markets or deepening expertise in an existing operations center.

 

With these two strategies our goal is to grow 10% on average each year. This measured growth approach allows us to continually provide excellent services to our clients. In addition, we believe this growth is sustainable because of our market diversity, including both government and private projects.

 

10% Profit. Each year, we target a reasonable 10% profit. Our profit target is fair to our clients, while also letting us achieve internal goals that benefit our Merrick family. Internally, our financial goal:

• Provides competitive wages and benefits to attract talent

• Strikes a balance between short-term profit and long-term investment in training, technology and initiatives

• Results in a competitive return on shareholder value

 

FOCUSED DIVERSITY

Diversity protects our company from market, industry, and regional economic swings.

With diverse expertise and services, we can remain profitable and solid through any adversity.

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ROBUST SERVICES

01

DIVERSE MARKETS

Focused expertise in four major markets allows us to remain strong as a company even if any particular market is in a down-cycle:

• National Security

• Infrastructure

• Energy and Chemicals

• Life Sciences

We provide services along the entire value chain including: Planning, Architecture, Engineering, Construction Management, Surveying and Mapping, Commissioning, Asset Management, and Operations Support. This diversity allows us to continually provide high quality service to our clients, from the start of a project to the end.

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GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY

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CLIENT TYPE DIVERSITY

Our strategy includes maintaining our current market mix of 50% federal and 50% private/state/local clients to provide growth and stability during all economic scenarios. To serve our clients, we want to deepen our expertise in our markets and move regionally into new geographies through a combination of organic and M&A growth. Our objective is to achieve “top 3” service provider status with all clients and be considered long-term partners and trusted advisors.

Merrick delivers our full range of services to all US locations and internationally in accordance with our clients’ desires.  We have performed services in over 90 countries. Our primary operations areas in the US are the Rocky Mountain West, Southwest, Southeast, and Alaska.  We have local presence and operations centers in these regions, and these operations centers can service all US locations. As part of our strategy planning each year, we decide if new operations centers may be required to serve clients needs.

LONG-TERM EMPLOYEE & CLIENT ENGAGEMENT

We believe that long-term talented staff attracts long-term clients. Our goal is to make Merrick a place where talented professionals spend a significant part of their career. Our Merrick family is important to us, and through this family, our clients see the difference between Merrick and other firms. We pride ourselves in our twenty-year club, which includes existing and retired employees and meets to celebrate each year. Just as our employee owners reach the twenty-year club, many of our clients have been partnering with us for more than 25 years.

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