Published April 2003

Putting staff, clients first
By ‘treating people fairly,’ Rocky Wens has turned support company into star player

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT Prominently displayed on the wall in Engineering Support Personnel’s main office in Lynnwood is this large photo of Rocky Wens’ grandfather, Loduvicus (Louis) Wens, working as a civil engineer in Indonesia. Following the path of his father, Jean, a mechanical engineer, Rocky Wens is the family’s third generation to work in the engineering field.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Across the country, Rocky M. Wens and his crew at Engineering Support Personnel in Lynnwood are helping Navy pilots perfect their flying skills, keeping soldiers proficient on the battlefield and protecting missile computer modules for Boeing’s Sea-Launch Program for water-launched space satellites.

Clients served by ESP’s engineers, project managers, designers and technology services experts include the U.S. Department of Defense, top-tier aerospace and industrial companies and state and local government agencies. It’s an enviable list for any company, but it wasn’t easy getting started.

Variety is the essence of the company’s work, from drawings for Ederer Corp. for the retracting Safeco Field roof and engineering work on Boeing overhead bridge cranes in Auburn and Renton to technical engineering services for NAS Whidbey’s P-3 and EA-6B flight training simulators.

Early on, Wens learned that small support companies like his have to make a positive, long-lasting impression on clients or they’ll never be able to compete with the Goliaths in the marketplace who have larger staffs and more established reputations. The effort has paid off with satisfied clients.

“Your team of experts’ ... professionalism and dedicated support have significantly enhanced my detachment’s ability to provide more realistic and thorough training for all Reserve P-3C aircrews ... a job exceptionally well done,” wrote Capt. Robert Sinibaldi Jr., commander of a reserve unit at Norfolk, Va.

Wens also learned that, being a small support company, his business gets buried at the bottom of the list of credits for almost any major project. But he believes ESP has to be a star player in those supporting roles, because he wants any project he’s involved with to be better because of his company’s presence.

Those strong feelings are part of his business philosophy, expressed on his Web site in terms such as “knowing the meaning of integrity ... honoring our commitments ... going the extra mile ... and always exceeding the expectations of our clients, our fellow employees and our community.”

Such lofty goals have been boasted about so much in the business world lately, without being backed up by performance, that they’ve become suspect. But Wens shows how successful a company and its employees can be when those promises are lived.

He has been so successful in fact that the U.S. Small Business Administration chose him as Washington state’s 2002 SBA Minority Small Business Person of the Year, honoring him with an award presentation at his Lynnwood office by SBA Administrator Hector Barreto during a Seattle visit. He won again in the SBA’s regional Western states’ competition, then traveled to Washington D.C. for the national awards.

“We didn’t win that one, but we were among 10 finalists out of 3 million minority-owned businesses in this country, and that’s not bad,” Wens said, grinning.

Not bad at all for a small company that only a half-dozen years ago was looking for a financial transfusion to stay alive.

“Private work was very competitive for a business our size so we decided to try to land some government work, aligning ourselves with an Orlando simulation-and-training company,” he said. That effort didn’t work out but two of the firm’s employees, experienced in government contract work on flight simulators, joined Wens’ company.

“With their help we bid on a contract for maintaining the P-3 Orion simulators at NAS Whidbey — and won it. That would have been our last hurrah in the training-and-simulation industry. Without that win we would have had to make serious adjustments to our business plan. And our main competitor was Lockheed (the builder of the P-3s),” he said. “We convinced the Navy that we would be better to work with than such a large company.”

Landing that contract, and performing well on it, changed the course of the business, reinforcing his feelings about “treating employees special and always exceeding clients’ expectations,” he said.

“We probably spent more on health and welfare benefits (than usual) for those employees but they were happier with their jobs ... as word got around, more opportunities came around,” he said. “Past performance is critical to your survival. If people find you’re a bright young company that exceeds expectations, you’ll get a second look.”

Another way Wens got a second look in contract bidding was using the SBA’s 8(a) program, which ensures equal access to federal contracts for small disadvantaged firms, part of the Small Business Act of 1958. It’s a business tool for government program managers, enabling them to connect more easily with smaller firms and giving the managers sole discretion in assembling a contract team.

The SBA certifies firms as financially sound and professionally competent for the specific needs of the contract, then negotiates and awards segments of the work to those qualified contractors in a short 14-day period, much faster than standard procurement procedures. Within nine years, companies are expected to wean themselves from the program, which ESP has done, now depending on 8(a) contracts for only about 3 percent of its work, Wens said.

In the course of growing his company, Wens built on his staff’s expertise and a growing familiarity with government agencies and their needs. Over the years, the firm has landed contracts for supply support and maintenance for Navy ship mockups used for fire-fighting training and the Marine Corps hired ESP staff to maintain “live fire” ranges at Camp Pendleton, 29 Palms and the Marine base in Okinawa.

A team of ESP experts also maintains the firing range at Fort Campbell, Ky. With the 101st Airborne Division now deployed to the Middle East, Wens said his crew has less work at the range. Instead of laying off staff, Wens assigned them to maintenance work and improvements on the range to keep them busy until the soldiers return.

“That meant a lot to them. They have their jobs and families there. It meant a lot to the Army because the range was being improved more than we could do when it was under heavy use and it meant a lot to our customers who saw how we treated our employees,” Wens said. “It proved we live by our philosophy of treating people fairly, not slashing staff to balance the bottom line.”

Another way Wens keeps his employees motivated and dedicated is to listen to their ideas.

“With our headquarters in Lynnwood and so many people in so many locations, we rely heavily on our managers to get the word out. We want to protect that entrepreneurial spirit to keep people creative. And we know it’s very motivating to come up with your own ideas and actually see them used, not lost in some chain of command. Employees are our number one asset, so why would you not take good care of that?”

Another relationship Wens has developed and maintained with care is with his banker, Gary Dale, in U.S. Bank’s Everett office.

“He’s been with us all the way. We couldn’t have survived without that supportive relationship,” Wens said.

Internally, he also relies on top staff members, including Senior Vice President Gary Nakata in Los Angeles; John Russell, Vice President of Simulation and Training in Orlando; his brother, Glenn Wens, CADD Engineering Services Manager; and Controller Margot McMartin.

Along with Glenn Wens’ work, other family members are also involved. Rocky’s wife, Ardis, provides part-time drafting services and his father, Jean, who was instrumental in helping start the business and is now semi-retired, maintains an office at the Lynnwood headquarters.

“I owe a debt of gratitude to my dad, not only for his expertise in the business but for having the courage to move his young family to America with only a hundred bucks in his pocket so that they could live the American dream,” Rocky said, “and, of course, for teaching me the technical aspects of the engineering business.”

The father of three children — Kelsie, 17; Haley, 15, and Anthony, 13 — Rocky Wens makes finding time for relaxing a priority, not only for his own fishing and outdoor interests but also with his family.

A resident of north Bothell, he and Ardis have coached soccer with different youth teams for 12 years in Snohomish County, starting when his oldest child was 5 or 6 years old, he said.

“Playing soccer was always big in Holland with my parents and uncles. I was the middle of three boys and soccer was a big part of our lives,” Wens said.

Born in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1959 of Dutch/Indonesian parents, Wens immigrated to Seattle in 1960 with his family, later attending Snohomish County schools.

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