Starting at the bottom rung and moving up to the CEO of a hydroexcavation company, Ken Sugawara knows how to best keep tabs on how his company is doing.
"If I don’t know what’s going on out there, it’s a very uncomfortable feeling,” says Sugawara, co-owner of Texas-based Landshark Hydro-Excavation.
Sugawara had 23 years' experience in the industry before starting his own operation with two partners in 2013. He started off as a swamper and worked up to being an operator.
While he has to spend some time in the office, he and partner Dave Davis spend substantial time in the field with the crews. “I’m out there,” Sugawara says. “I have just as many clients as anybody else to see and deal with as well. I’m still very hands on.”
Getting into the field allows him to see where there might be issues. In June he noticed one of them — the need for additional oversight.
“We had a meeting and I identified that we have grown and we need to start adding additional oversight,” Sugawara says. “The only way I would’ve known that is because I’m in tune and listen to our operations guys, I pay attention to what is going on and I listen. If I had not been out there, I probably would not have noticed or seen that we’re there and ready for this need.”
That’s one of the special things about the company: All of the operations managers are out in the field.
“I think it reflects on our management team,” Sugawara says. “We’re all out there, we’re not absent. I think that is impressive to a lot of our clients because typically you don’t see that. But we’re out there and they can get a hold of us anytime they need to.”
