To successfully operate a $1 billion company with 6,000 employees and 176 offices in 37 countries, sophisticated technology is paramount. Beyond that, however, is impeccable management—specifically relationship management and internal knowledge management.

“We are effective only when we are trusted,” said Robert Uhler, president and CEO of MWH Global, Inc., a technology, engineering, construction, and consulting company that operates in the global markets for water, wastewater, environmental services, energy, and hydropower. “Trust grows through the nurturing of solid relationships and through supplying valued information.”

In building successful client relationships, there is a continuous need to provide expert answers to issues of the moment. “Knowledge is our key deliverable,” Uhler said. More than 10 years ago, MWH started work on advanced computer-based technology that would allow it to convey the company’s knowledge anywhere it was needed, instantly.

Today’s knowledge management system, which won the 2003 DM Review magazine’s annual World Class Solutions Award for the best business intelligence system (driven by Lotus Notes), sends knowledge across some 125 servers worldwide. Its knowledge transport is handled by satellite, fiber, wired, and wireless networks—serving as a sort of private Internet.

“The system allows us to tap into company expertise instantly,” Uhler said. “If you have a dredging problem, wouldn’t it be useful to pick the brains of people in The Netherlands where dredging has reached the highest development? We can do that. If you have drainage issues, how about tapping into the expertise of key experts in New Orleans? We can do that.”

The nuts and bolts
MWH has between 3,000 and 4,000 projects underway at any given time. Current projects range from restructuring the wastewater system in Sydney, Australia to designing an asset management technology solution for Cleveland, Ohio to directing environmental programs at Air Force bases and other Federal facilities around the globe as part of an eight-year, $1.1 billion initiative.

Among MWH’s employees are engineers, builders, scientists, consultants, geologists, IT specialists, architects, lawyers, regulatory experts, and financial analysts throughout the world. “There are four drivers that keep us growing,” said Uhler, who started as an engineer with the company more than 25 years ago. He listed those drivers as aging infrastructure, population movement, regulations, and efficiency.

“Efficiency becomes more important each week in our world,” Uhler said. “Water can no longer be handled with a bureaucracy’s timetable and attitudes. Water is still primarily a governmental monopoly, but more business leaders are serving as mayors and elected officials these days. The result is an increasingly forceful call for accountability and responsiveness.”

Located in Broomfield, Colo., MWH Global is well positioned to increase efficiency in each of its areas of specialty. The company has expanded from its engineering and infrastructure base into successful new lines of business, including asset management, business consulting, and enterprise technology services. A new project might be managed by MWH, its facilities and infrastructures designed and built by MWH, its processes driven by MWH controls and software, and its finances and assets managed by MWH.

Local in scope, global in scale
MWH fosters local client relationships on a worldwide basis. “You won’t find Americans running our global offices,” Uhler said. “Anyone with any pride in their community’s growth wants to work with local people.”

Thus, MWH populates each of its global offices with local experts who know the regional and national priorities and are conversant with all the idioms and customs. “We offer the world’s best answers drawn from excellent engineers and managers globally, and we offer it through people with close-proximity relationships,” Uhler said. “We prefer to move knowledge, not people.”

To prepare its people to handle cosmopolitan needs yet still deliver a single set of consistent messages worldwide, MWH runs an internal university. “Rather than focusing on job content or technical topics, our university delivers courses on ethics, personal development, and management training,” said Uhler. Founded six years ago, the collegial function provides three-day concentrated courses, and more than 6,000 employees have benefited to date.

“MWH University has been a tremendous achievement,” Uhler said. “Initially it was developed to impart knowledge, but the real success has been in the creation of teams. People are together in intensive sessions, taking themselves out of their own silos. They learn what others in the company are charged with doing, and, most importantly, they build relationships and points of contact in the company.”

In addition, MWH sends top performers to Stanford and Harvard business schools in the US and the best European business school, INSEAD in Paris. “We encourage them to bring ideas back,” said Uhler, particularly ideas on how to foster relationships and teamwork. Those ideas are put into practice in the building of relationships with clients.

Knowledge is central
Although MWH’s knowledge management system rivals the competition and has garnered several awards, Uhler emphasizes that the system provides only transport—ensuring the accuracy of the information is not up to the system, but qualified staff. “We have many highly trained technical experts who are more than able to discuss the merits of a select piece of information,” he said. “Our primary focus is that the information and the discussion bring people closer to a global solution for our clients.”

In addition, the system acts as a company archive of project results worldwide. “If a client service manager needs a proposal on an earth-filled dam, they can find the last 10 proposals we’ve done anywhere in the world,” said Uhler. “MWH staff can retrieve presentations, interim engineering reports, final reports, and even contact the team that did the work. The wheel doesn’t have to be reinvented each time, which enables our experts to focus on the unique aspects of a current client’s challenge.”

In this day and age, knowledge is more accessible than ever. “People are able to get facts with more ease than any other time in history,” said Uhler. However, collecting reams of information doesn’t provide a clear course of action, or the best answer. It has to be evaluated by an expert, and it’s only a tool when used right.

According to Uhler, MWH’s strong suit is providing those answers, and it’s his job to make sure that remains the case. “My days are fully engaged with business challenges and new global opportunities,” Uhler said. “But my most important job is to keep people energized—to keep generating the spark. We’re a service business and our inventory goes home every night. Bottom line, the key to MWH’s success is to have engaged, committed people come back into work the next morning.”

Dave Gehman is a Massachusetts-based freelance writer with a couple of decades’ experience in writing about high tech and organizational dynamics. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it