Evans: A history in delivery

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :31/03/2008 05:41:08

Evans Consoles specializes in custom control room consoles, millwork and audio-visual enclosures and has built a reputation for providing quality product and service that continues to lead the industry. Greg Smith, CEO, tells Exec more Written by Ian Armitage and Produced by Rich Gentile

Whether it is Air Traffic Control centers monitoring air traffic, CIA agents scrutinizing intelligence in top-secret counter terrorism centers or technicians monitoring your electrical power network, control rooms and command centers play an important role in modern life. But do we take the time to consider how one of these mission-critical facilities is designed and built or even why ergonomics is so critical to ensuring they run effectively? Chances are, no.

Luckily for us Evans Consoles does and has spent the last 28 years helping its customers such as The Pentagon, Boeing, Saudi Aramco and NASA focus on doing what Evans’ CEO, Greg Smith, calls “the important stuff”. Not to say the design of technical furniture isn’t important, in fact, Evans is so good at it that it has even helped customers improve the way their control rooms are run.

Founded in 1980 by Ross Evans, a man whose simple vision was to produce high quality, specialized furniture for mission critical and technology intensive facilities, Evans Consoles is today the world leader in the design and manufacture of custom control room solutions for such environments. Specializing in custom console, millwork and audio-visual enclosures, Evans has built a reputation for providing quality service that continues to lead the industry.

“We have over 7,500 successful installations worldwide,” explains Greg Smith. “Our experience in the command center environment is unparalleled.” Evans has a vast client list, ranging from Fortune 500 companies and high-ranking international Government agencies to small municipal facilities. This means no matter the job, it “has the skills to exceed any expectations”.

As the result of this long and distinguished list of clients, Evans has global respect and experience. Indeed, with its worldwide headquarters and state of the art 170,000 square foot manufacturing plant located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and an experienced sales force and support network spanning the globe, Evans is poised to meet all control room console furniture needs, no matter the location. “We are the only truly international company in our bracket,” says Greg Smith. “And clients want an international partner.”

But what of its major markets; who wants Evans’ consoles? “We track and have strategies around 14 market verticals and successfully serve and customize our command center furniture to industries such as air traffic control, chemical and petrochemical, power generation, emergency response, oil and gas and military. I could go on,” says Richard Game, Evans’ VP of Business Development, who is excited by the almost limitless potential.

Full-service approach

Evans offers a full-service approach to all its clients. It has dedicated in-house expertise in client proposals, design, engineering and customer service. If that isn’t enough, Greg says its award-winning Imaging Department can “provide customers with photo-realistic renderings and video walkthroughs of the command center before it is even built”. Its state-of-the-art manufacturing capability is also second to none.

Evans is always looking to improve, and regularly pushes the boundaries. “One of the areas we have invested considerable capital in is developing a proprietary software tool [Snap Design 2] in conjunction with our supplier AutoDesk, which is at the leading edge,” says Greg. “In an hour or two sitting with the client, you can have the whole room designed exactly to their needs and sent to the shop floor ready to be made. It is that simple and eliminates the design step if you like.” This is a major productivity opportunity for Evans. “There is nobody in the market place that has a tool like this,” he adds.

“It is not just cost saving for us. It is also helping with the delivery cycle as well,” continues Richard.

As the recognized industry leaders, Evans has a strong focus on product R&D and a commitment to client satisfaction. “We continually seek design and process improvements to ensure our products and services are the best in the control center industry,” says Greg Smith.

Since Greg joined the company four years ago, Evans has transformed. He has refocused the company and returned back to Ross Evans’ original goal: producing high quality, specialized furniture for mission critical and technology intensive situations. Obviously that is a difficult task, particular in manufacturing, an industry constrained by cost and efficiency. After all, how can you be efficient and cost effective if you are custom building every time? Regardless, Evans is always looking to reduce cost. “We look to do it in a manner which facilitates making our internal business work smoothly,” says Smith.

“Snap Design 2 perfectly illustrates what we try to do to reduce cost through process efficiencies and component standardization,” says Richard. “It isn’t an easy task, and is a continuous challenge, but is something that “any successful manufacturing company needs to do to remain competitive.”

Current performance

Mr. Smith is extremely happy with the way the company has developed over the past few years. In the last two and a half years alone it has doubled sales. “We have done that through a combination of reinforcing and growing the international market, while developing new product offerings. Our situation is that we have turned away several million dollars worth of business in the last four or five months because we have a backlog that would not allow us to deliver as quickly as the client may like. So, we turn down business. From that perspective it is going very well and we are adding capacity to meet future goals.”

Greg believes the company’s main challenge, therefore, is managing growth in a controlled manner. “That is our challenge,” he says. “Why? Well, it starts with how we measure our performance. We are in the high 90 percent in terms of delivering our product on time. That is one of the reasons we have turned down business, because we felt without doing so we couldn’t meet those requirements. And are we reliable? Well, we were the first Canadian company to ever receive the Space Flight Awareness supplier award from United Space Alliance for our ongoing work with NASA and we have had several other impressive awards. This sort of recognition proves you are a quality supplier to major customers. That is a big part of our reputation.”

One of the concerns for both Greg and Richard is what is happening with the US economy. “I am extremely happy that we had the initiative to focus back on the international side so that we diversified the risk of any one area having a downturn,” explains Greg. “There is caution in the US today. When that happens major projects can be postponed, so it could have an impact.”

As a Canadian manufacturer, the strong Canadian dollar has also provided a few challenges. With most projects in US dollars and its share of competitors who do manufacture in the US, Evan has had to be very proactive and has implemented various hedging and pricing strategies to minimize the currency impact as much as possible. Because of these strategies, the strengthening Loonie “has not, at this point, stunted our growth and we have been able to deal with this challenge,” says Greg.

Just as importantly, Evans has been able to source some of its materials from low cost locations and this has helped ease the troubles: “We have a product structure that allows us to manufacture subcomponents at our newly operational facility in China,” says Richard. “It has given us the opportunity to at least maintain and in many cases improve margin as a result of leveraging the lower input costs.”

Potential for growth

Regardless of the challenges, it is clear the potential for global growth is huge for Evans. The China facility Richard mentioned is a key part of opening up the Chinese market, which is of course booming. “Our biggest growth areas are certainly the international markets that we talked about,” says Greg Smith. “Are we well placed to take advantage? I think we are. Our issue though is managing the growth. We have opened two new showrooms in China – Shanghai and Beijing - and we have developed a partner in India too. The Middle East is also very strong and all of these are giving us opportunities that have exceeded our initial plans for developing back into those countries. We are well positioned to take part in the international growth.”

Greg and his team have gone back to what Ross Evans envisaged, utilising technology to make the company even more productive and get a better return. “This has been working very successfully for us and now it is a question of managing the growth,” he says. “We just don’t have the number of people to grow the business as fast as the market is suggesting there is opportunity for.”

Indeed, the real key to Evans’ recent successes has been returning to its roots and providing a high level of customisation for clients rather than, as Greg puts it, “trying to look at it from a purely cost standpoint and trying to reduce our costs and go to more centralized standard product.” In fact, he has done the opposite: “We invested in engineering and marketing to ensure clients understood Evans could provide them with a custom, outstanding piece of furniture that would be, if they looked at the cost in the long term, a much better return on investment. 75 percent of our business is from repeat clients, which tells you more than enough about our long term benefits.”

After 28 successful years, Evans is not ready to rest on its laurels. Pushing the envelope to ensure satisfied clients for years to come is its core focus. And if client feedback is any indication, they certainly are succeeding at that.