DPR employees remember co-founder Doug Woods
Doug Woods, who co-established DPR Development in 1990, died on May well 19 at age 70, reportedly of pancreatic cancer.
Woods (proven over, heart) established the Redwood Metropolis, California-primarily based company with Peter Nosler (suitable) and Ron Davidowski (remaining), and underneath their stewardship, DPR grew fast as a industrial contractor and construction manager. In seven several years of its founding, the agency ranked in the nation’s top 50 general contractors, a standing it has held because.
Born in Ontario, Canada, in January 1951, Woods grew up in a building loved ones. His father was an engineer who worked in development and genuine estate for HP. The Woods relatives lived in homes Doug’s mother and father crafted by themselves from the floor up or renovated. Not amazingly, starting in his formative years, Woods grew to really like creating points, according to a memorial page on the DPR website.
Started at a time when several construction corporations experienced transitioned into using brokers to help alleviate complications from coordinating discounts and self-undertaking perform, DPR’s founders purposely took a fingers-on tactic.
Woods’ personal philosophy was stamped all above his company’s company society, in accordance to the web site. He insisted DPR generate a consumer-centric company product established on using great care of its staff. That translated to a business tradition profoundly dedicated to employee safety and incident-absolutely free function times.
Referred to by a lot of staff as “Uncle Doug,” Woods went out of his way to deal with employees the way he himself would want to be handled. The mutually respectful lifestyle is reflected in the company’s lack of places of work and company titles, famous personnel Robert Andrescik in a LinkedIn website post.
“When you hire wonderful persons who want to do good function, offer them wonderful pay back and positive aspects and position them in a great do the job lifestyle, you get (you guessed it) fantastic results,” he claimed.
A constructive mind-set
As passionate as he was about the persons the enterprise utilized and served, Woods was similarly enthusiastic about building by itself.
The a lot more complex, technical and complicated the building problem, the a lot more he cherished the perform, associates stated. He notably relished checking out jobsites and interacting with task groups and prospects, eyeing just about every possibility to go his business ahead.
A lot of the company’s achievement may well be attributed to Woods’ conviction anything at all was attainable, coworkers mentioned. “I keep in mind operating in the early days of DPR in pursuit of microelectronics producing services,” said project government Whitney Dorn.
“Just a single of individuals assignments would have tripled our quantity at the time. Those people projects appeared so out of get to. But not for Doug,” she reported. “His self esteem, optimism, and pure willpower produced us experience like we would land them. And we did!”
That willpower led DPR to a string of milestones. In 1992, the organization landed its very first floor-up challenge, building a experienced nursing facility in Los Gatos, California. In 1998, DPR attained the $1 billion mark in annual earnings.
In November 2015, just months following the company feted its silver anniversary, Woods, Nosler and Davidowski were honored by the San Francisco Business enterprise Situations, which gave the trio a “Most Admired CEO” award. Nowadays, DPR is the 12th largest design company in the U.S. by revenue, with almost 8,000 workers across the U.S., Europe and Asia.
In the several years to occur, Woods’ trademark fight cry is specified to reside on at DPR. “We exist to establish excellent issues,” he frequently said. “Assistance your workforce. Ever forward.”
