Success Insight: A Chamber Member's Story

 

Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Derthick, Henley & Wilkerson Architects is dedicated to quality work-even if it means turning down a multimillion-dollar project.

 

When a major corporation announced plans to construct its headquarters in Chattanooga, Alan Derthick and his team submitted a proposal for the project. However, the firm pulled out of the competition when it became clear that it would not be able to perform the quality of work to which it was accustomed for the fee that was being offered.

 

Derthick, Henley & Wilkerson has a history of maintaining its integrity, honoring its clients' requests, and being flexible enough to meet the challenges of building on some of the most difficult terrain in the United States.

 

In one instance, the Hunter Museum of American Art asked for a building five times larger than the existing 10,000-square-foot museum. It also wanted to keep the 1905 mansion, perched on an 80-foot bluff, intact without overwhelming it with new structures. The solution? Derthick's team expanded underground, even building windows on the bluff side overlooking the Tennessee River.

 

The firm also became experienced in sustainable development while building a stadium on a reclaimed brownfield site. After two-and-a-half years of work that included negotiations with state and federal environmental agencies, the firm delivered the project for $500,000 below the $28.5 million budget.

 

Neither of these award-winning projects would have been possible without quality staff, according to Derthick. Since its inception, the firm has used a novel approach to employee recruitment and retention- sharing profits with all the staff and offering partnership opportunities to especially valuable staff members. This philosophy, continues Derthick, helps keep talented professionals from joining competitors or creating their own firms. Currently, the firm has five partners.

 

Derthick, Henley & Wilkerson Architects regularly handles $100 million in projects, mostly for longtime clients of 10 to 40 years. That repeat business and the "ability to go home at night," is why Derthick says there are no set plans to expand the business geographically. "Once you get bigger than we are, you become businesspeople instead of architects." 

 

To share a Success InSight of your own, e-mail Gregory Galdabini at ggaldabi@uschamber.com, phone 202-463-5563, or fax to 202-463-5707.