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Tim Loughran |
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Entrepreneurial Dominion Cleaning Up With
Clean Rooms AdvanceTEC is thriving in the business of designing contamination-free work places. Its competitive advantages: creativity and a willingness to take risk. | ||||||||||||
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Sometimes,
Tim Loughran, the managing partner of AdvanceTEC LLC,
can come across as a little cocky. When asked how his
17-person engineering/contracting firm can compete so
successfully against larger companies for clean rooms
and other high-tech projects, his answer is simple:
“We’re better engineers.” Then, after a pause, he
adds: “We’re also risk takers.” A
case in point was a job the Richmond company recently
won from Merck & Co. Inc. Merck’s pharmaceutical
plant in Elkton
, “In
our business, there’s always a better way,” says
Loughran. “We spent extra time up front to figure it
out.” The company risked some $70,000 just to develop
the proposal, but the plan it submitted saved Merck
money on the project and took less time to execute,
allowing the drug maker to ramp up production more
rapidly. Best of all, AdvanceTEC didn’t have to
sacrifice profit margins to get the contract. Specializing in clean room technologies, Loughran and his partner John Burton formed AdvanceTEC in 2000 to serve the semiconductor industry. Sensing the coming collapse of the microelectronics sector soon after their start-up, they diversified into biotech – a wise move. Biotech and pharmaceuticals account for 80 percent of the company’s business today.
Now
AdvanceTEC is poised for another spurt of growth – it
has a $25 million backlog of work -- as it taps the big
money flowing into nanotech. Universities and the
federal government are plowing hundreds of millions of
dollars into building nanotech research facilities, all
of which require environments free from air-borne
contaminants. Pursuing
work all around the country, Loughran could locate his
business anywhere he wants. Although he gripes about the
high cost of air fares, he’s delighted with the And
thirdly, Loughran says, his family loves it here, he
lives close to work, and he’s only 20 minutes from
downtown. What’s not to like? “Our company is built
on people who came here because of Motorola and decided
they wanted to live here.” AdvanceTEC
is typical of the high-performance, knowledge-intensive
service companies that thrive in the Loughran
was
part of the crowd that thronged to “My
wife was raised in Long Island
,” Loughran recalls. “She was crying all the way
down the road to Richmond
. Six months later, she didn’t want to leave.” Four
years later, the Loughrans did face the prospect of
leaving. The Motorola expansion never materialized and
PCI closed its office. Rather than move to somewhere
like Dallas or What
the newly minted entrepreneurs didn’t reckon on was
just how quickly and sharply the economy would change.
When the tech bubble burst, expansion in the
semiconductor sector came to a thudding halt.
Fortunately, microelectronics wasn’t the only industry
that needed clean rooms. The biotech and pharmaceutical
industries had escaped the downturn largely unscathed. AdvanceTEC
followed the money, switching from semiconductors to
biotech. The shift in industry focus did take some
adapting. The microelectronics industry is a rapid
innovator; speed and time to market are imperative.
Pharmaceuticals, by contrast, are heavily regulated by
the Food and Drug Administration. “Projects move a lot
slower. You can’t figure things out on the fly,”
says Loughran. But “clean rooms are clean rooms. You
move and filter air.” Since
then, AdvanceTEC has tapped into another market for its
expertise: nanotech. This
emerging sector also has its procurement peculiarities.
Nearly all the facilities are university, public-bid
projects. But AdvanceTec prides itself on its
adaptability. “We’re quick, we’re nimble,” says
Loughran. “We’re having a lot of fun learning it.” AdvanceTEC
is a textbook example of the kind of high-performance,
Knowledge Economy company that is sinking roots in The
key, says Loughran, is hiring great people. He pays them
well and demands a lot of them. And they demand more of
themselves. Everyone on staff is eager to learn and
expand their personal knowledge. “We’ve got $750,000
to $1 million in revenue per employee,” he says.
“That’s enormous productivity.” Because
the company pays its employees so well, its labor costs
and its overhead are high. Loughran tried
sub-contracting some work to other engineering firms but
he ended the practice, he says, because he wasn’t
delivering the best quality work. He brought all the
work back in house. Devising solutions to complex
problems requires close communication between members of
the team and the customer, Loughran explains. “It’s
a very interactive process. We consult with our
customers every step of the way.” Conversely, working smart more than compensates for the company’s higher cost structure. “We select our projects very carefully, and we really go after them. Our hit rate is 90 percent,” Loughran says. “If we’re creative, if we can find a better way to do the job, we win."
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Find Out More...
This article was originally published in Richmond Bio Synthesis, a free quarterly newsletter focusing on the life sciences in the Richmond region.
If you would like to sponsor a profile of your company on VA Newswire, contact the publisher at jim@vanewswire or by calling (804) 873-1543. | ||||||||||||||
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