We recently connected with Patrick McNerney and have shared our conversation below.
Patrick, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
I typically have some sort of side project that is creative for the sake of creativity. Currently, I’m working on a short film with another work colleague of mine, Daniel Jones. If not working on the short film, I play guitar or make short videos. I find that often, keeping the creative part of my mind busy keeps me positive and allows for that creativity to bleed over into my work life. In general, if you feel inspired, you tend to manage and lead better. If you allow yourself to get swept away in the current that is day to day life, you lose perspective and oversight. Somehow, flexing the creative part of my mind, allows me to avoid burn out and also keep bringing or nurturing innovation at our company. I find many of our employees are highly motivated creative types too. As a business, we foster creativity and innovation.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
3D Design & Engineering is the accumulation of decades of experience in the telecommunications industry. We love to bring new ideas to the table and launch new technologies to solve old problems. The engineering division has always been innovating; utilizing technologies such as LiDAR, Drones, and 3D modeling. Due to the success of the engineering division, 3D Design & Engineering has been growing significantly the past several years with no sign of slowing down. In 2020 we started an in-house surveying division to compliment the engineering division. The surveying department has taken on a life of it’s own due to the leadership of our excellent professional land surveyor. Around 2020/2021 we also started a utilities division. 3D Design & Engineering is working directly for some of the largest utility providers in the country as well as performing services like utility locating for our wireless customers. It has been great to see the company grow, and also see our team step up to every challenge that arises due to the growth.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back, I believe the three most important qualities for our business have been competency, integrity and innovation. Before you can think about anything else, you need to ensure your team fully understands all technical aspects of the work you are performing (this is engineering afterall). From there, the leadership needs to fully understand the objectives and timelines of their customers. If everyone is competent in these areas, we move onto integrity. To me, integrity means you can be trusted to do the right thing. If you’re competent in your area of expertise, and have integrity it means you will serve the customer well and can build a meaningful relationship. If you have those two items, it paves the way to innovation. This is only natural with an environment full of competent people who truly care about the end goal and end product. You will naturally find ways to achieve the same goals with more efficiency, quality, or added value. However, if you remove one of those three traits, particularly integrity, it could be disastrous. This makes finding the right people for your team critical and no one said it would be easy!
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
Any successful business will always have challenges. In fact, if you don’t have problems, it means you aren’t doing something right! Every person, at every level of our business is constantly problem solving. There are micro and macro problems as well. You always have to prioritize these and ensure your company is on track and properly serving your customers. The wireless and utility industries are very busy right now, and as our business continues to grow and scale, the challenge will always be ensuring we maintain the quality our customers have come to expect as we grow. This aspect is so important to the leadership at 3D Design & Engineering, if we had to choose between growth and quality, we would chose to sacrifice growth for quality. Fortunately, that has never come up, and likely it is because quality and integrity are at the top of our corporate culture.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.3ddne.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamcnerney/
