My name is Mike McMahon, and I'm the founder of Encompass.  I am a project management and business development executive with a vast construction engineering and senior management experience.  From my early work as a Project Manager to my more recent executive assignments at Fluor Corporation, Jacobs Engineering, CRS Sirrine, and my project management-consulting firm, I have been an active and dedicated contributor to the EPC industry, with recognized achievement in project turnarounds, business development, managing key accounts, process controls, and improvements, startups, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and profit improvement initiatives.

 

In 1981, while attending a Fluor training class, two questions were asked by our facilitator.  The first was, "How do you want to be remembered as a person after you die?"  The second was, "How do you want to be remembered in your profession after you die?"  I don't know what I said about the first, but the second has always stayed with me.  What would I want the engineering and construction industry, my profession, to think of me?  I wanted my epitaph to read, "The engineering and construction industry is better off because Mike was here."  

 

I wondered how I would do that.  I entered the EPC world with the unorthodox background of an economics degree from the University of Cincinnati.  What was I going to add to the equation? What could I contribute to a world of architects, engineers, and tradesmen who collectively represented thousands of years of "the right kind" of experience? 

 

The answer came to me in 1985 while sitting in a roofing subcontractors meeting. I observed that questions were coming from all corners of the room, but no one comprehensively knew every question to ask to ensure that the project would have a successful roofing program.  There was no consistency or way of accumulating knowledge from one job to the next other than the mix of people.

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After the meeting, I spent about an hour going to each participant, asking them how they remembered from project to project all the right questions to ask to ensure the roofing would be successful.  Some said, "Well, I've done this 10 times, and I just remember." Another said, "I just look at the specs." Another said, "I've got a few notes scattered in notebooks that I try to pull together before these types of meetings." The subcontract administrator said, "I just refer to previous project contract notes."  

 

After talking with these people, I found 4 more questions that should have been asked in addition to the 23 questions discussed in that meeting.  I then went to the field.  I asked the roofing subcontractor superintendent what he was worried about on this project.  He gave me 17 additional issues to be concerned about.  To fast forward, I followed this specific contractor for the project's duration.  19 other issues were raised.  So, we started with 23 questions when it should have been 63.  Today the Beacon checklist for roofing has 104 issues about roofing quality and another 44 about safety, contracts, and administration.

 

For the balance of that project, I asked anyone who would talk to me about their respective responsibilities.  By the time the project was completed, I had created a checklist short of 3,000 questions.  I had involved 37 people from all aspects of the job, tapping into nearly 750 years of collective EPC experience. The EPC Beacon system had its genesis with that first checklist.  This was an organized way to go to the next project and beyond with order and accumulated knowledge.

 

Very importantly, Beacon wasn't built from a think tank of brilliant engineers and architects.  I did get their input, but I also went into the trenches to get the information from the people who dug the ditches, put up steel, hung process pipe, and pulled the electrical cable.  I got it from the owner, who pulled his hair out because of missed schedules or cost overruns.  I got it from vendors who were given the wrong information or showed up on-site to install equipment when nothing was ready. In other words, Beacon by Encompass was developed from the knowledge of the folks who know what they're talking about because they've done it.  More than 2,000 industry professionals, each with an average of 20 years of experience, have reviewed or had input into our system. 

 

After 35 years of passionately collecting information, the Beacon by Encompass has over 50,000 pages of knowledge compiled into over 1 million specific, proactive, actionable questions on over 13,000 industry-best checklists, forms, procedures, and testing and training documentation.   

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Our mission is to provide a one-of-a-kind set of products and associated consulting to significantly reduce the risks that affect the cost, schedule, quality, and safety during the life cycle of any project.