While every client requires a unique advisory approach, Hill Advisory brings a few constants to each of our assignments around the world. Among the most important of these is an efficient and flexible staffing approach rooted in trusted partnerships. By building advisory approaches around this pillar, Hill delivers value, saves money and time, and promotes organizational success for our clients.

Effective Executive Administration

Hill’s staffing approach aims to ensure cost-effective utilization of advisory staff with the specific skills and experience required to transform our clients’ organizations through business optimization, capital planning, transactional diligence, asset management, and the implementation of digital tools and strategies. Such an approach requires effective administration at the executive level.

According to Hill Advisory President Juan-Pablo (J.P.) Villamizar, Hill’s leadership achieves executive success by developing a comprehensive understanding of a client’s organization, objectives, and projects, as well as a deep familiarity with Hill’s bench and current staff utilization levels. This enables a timely mobilization of the right resources.

“We work to develop trusted partnerships with our clients with a focus on open communication,” explains J.P. “Open communication helps ensure we have a comprehensive understanding of our clients’ objectives. Just as importantly, through dialogue we get insight into their operations, projects, processes, procedures, cultures, short- and long-term needs, what their stakeholders’ needs are, their budgetary constraints, major risks, and so on. We then apply Hill’s advisory expertise to each client’s unique situation and deliver exactly the level of staffing support they require.”

J.P. adds that Hill prioritizes contractual flexibility, enabling us to scale up or down and/or change the blend of our staff expertise as conditions change. “We plan for change and constantly look at ways we can adjust our staffing to make sure our clients are getting the most value,” he says.

In addition to built-in contractual flexibility, Hill leadership stays in close contact with our partners and our clients throughout the duration of our contact terms, monitoring staff performance and progress against key performance indicators as part of our quality assurance/quality control approach. With tracking, reporting, and regular communication, Hill can proactively pivot and adjust our staffing levels as conditions on the ground change, promoting continuous improvement and client satisfaction.

Ensuring the Right Fit

An efficient and flexible staffing approach still requires the right staff, and, in many markets today, owners are facing a talent gap for professional services. The shortage makes finding the right staff for any given organizational endeavor challenging.

“Hill benefits from a global pool of resources,” says Vice President Daveylyn Berkenkotter. “Around the world, we have experts at every level of our operations, from senior program and project managers to specialists in fields like estimating, document control, and safety management. When there’s a gap locally, we get in touch with one of Hill’s global experts who has the knowledge our clients need to execute their projects.”

Hill’s leaders also coordinate with other departments to help ensure our clients have access to the right professionals. After establishing open communications with clients, for example, Hill leadership can make certain that our talent acquisition team has precise staffing requirements based on our clients’ needs. This helps Hill recruiters identify and vet the most suitable candidates quickly.

As our operations staff work with clients, team leaders also begin to solicit and compile best practices, which Hill’s learning and development team uses to create onboarding materials for new staff working with those clients. “This promotes consistent service quality across a client’s portfolio,” says Daveylyn. “It also assures that each of our team members functions as a seamless extension of our clients’ staff from day one—that means fewer learning curves, shorter transition periods, and reduced costs.”

More generally, Hill invests in learning and development to help operations staff grow in their careers and acquire certifications and credentials that matter to our clients. Investment in learning and development also helps cultivate a culture of partnership within Hill, contributing to staff retention and team stability for our clients.

A Culture of Partnership

As J.P. indicates, partnership with our clients allows Hill to tailor our staffing approach to our clients’ unique situations. Partnership also supports retention, minimizing staffing gaps on our teams. However, Hill’s culture of partnership does not begin or end with individual advisory assignments.

“Trusted partnership is one of Hill’s core values, and we focus on cultivating a culture of partnership by prioritizing safety, integrity, professional excellence, respect, continuous improvement, and teamwork with all of our employees, our partners, and our subconsultants,” says J.P.

As a testament to our culture of partnership, as well as its results in forming lasting, productive professional relationships both within and outside of Hill, J.P. cites Hill’s work with a utility company in Southern California.

For more than 12 years, the utility has trusted Hill to efficiently staff and manage their projects. Through our current contract, Hill is responsible for providing a large number of professionals to fill multiple roles and serve as extensions of our client’s staff on a variety of projects, ranging from the implementation of new technology to asset replacements, training programs, business process improvements, and more. It is one of our largest contracts by number of staff employed globally.

Daveylyn and J.P. lead the team, monitoring key performance indicators, helping facilitate communications, and cultivating a culture of partnership across the entire project organization.

In the time that Hill has worked with the utility, six of our team members, formerly employed on the client’s projects, have launched their own specialist firms. Because of the strong relationships developed with the client and with the Hill team, those six professionals and their firms continue to work with Hill on behalf of the utility as subconsultants.

Through efficient, flexible staffing rooted in trusted partnerships with our client, our employees, and our subconsultants, the Hill team drives success across our client’s portfolio.

“We’re proud that Hill’s former employees have launched their own firms,” concludes Daveylyn. “We’re even prouder that they continue to work as part of our team today. The relationships we have with this client and these subconsultants proves the strength of our partnership culture, which underpins our staffing approach and our advisory approach around the world.”

To learn more about Hill Advisory, please contact J.P. Villamizar at [email protected] or Daveylyn Berkenkotter at [email protected].