Fostering North Wind Group's Future Business Plans
Ascent planned and developed a comprehensive strategic business framework to drive growth within North Wind Group’s construction division.
Location: Idaho Falls, ID
Founded in 1997, North Wind Group is a multi-faceted corporation operating across a range of industries including construction, environmental & engineering services, facility operations, and industrial replacement.
Revenue: $650 million
North Wind Group currently operates on a very large scale, employing over 2,000 employees across more than 30 office locations throughout the U.S., Hawaii & Alaska. Their construction division works on projects in both government and commercial sectors.
Strategic Business Planning
Ascent worked with North Wind Group to develop a strategic business framework and provide a roadmap to guide their construction division’s long-term growth and success.
North Wind Group recently hired a new CEO and President, Rich Driggs, who took charge of seeking out ideas to develop a new business strategy and bring a new vision of leadership to the organization.
North Wind Group knew they wanted to optimize performance within their company’s five major divisions (specifically the construction division), and felt they could benefit from a third-party’s impartial assessment of their multi-faceted business. Enter, Ascent Consulting.
Due to our specific expertise in construction, North Wind Group hired Ascent to help develop and test a new strategic business framework for the company. They also requested that Ascent contribute our analysis and insight to a board level presentation being given a month later to company ownership.
Optimize your company's Strategic Business Plan
Planning for Future Success
Ascent began with a discovery meeting in our Atlanta office with North Wind Group’s new CEO, Rich, to analyze their current strategy, explore future goals, assess risk management, and identify important KPI’s. Once Ascent had a better understanding of their current situation, we flew out to North Wind Group’s executive retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to host onsite planning and strategy sessions with the executive management team.
Ascent led two days full of strategy sessions with North Wind Group’s management team. In those sessions, Ascent created a comprehensive SWOT analysis, outlined specific pain points, and reviewed company operations to be able to provide competitive analysis across all their divisions of business. We also specifically compiled research into federal spending trends across multiple NAICS codes. As requested, Ascent then added our research and analysis into the final presentation slide deck and worked with North Wind Group to provide targeted data which met the goals outlined for their board presentation.
Contributing research and analysis for North Wind’s final board presentation was a new project element for Ascent’s consultants to balance. On top of developing concepts for the strategic business plan itself, a one-month project timeline meant all information for the final presentation would have to be fully formatted and delivered ahead of time for review by North Wind Group’s team.
Clearly define both the client's short-term & long-term strategic goals
Conduct a SWOT analysis to understand key strengths & weaknesses
Provide industry best practice knowledge tailored specifically for the client
Identify Key Performance Indicators to measure strategic efforts
Provide insight into profit drivers & areas of opportunity for improvement
Create a framework that encourages & supports exponential growth
“Our work with you was a great experience with great output. If there is a need for future engagement, we will certainly reach out. Thank you, again, for everything that you and your team did to support us on a moment’s notice. You went above and beyond and that matters.”
John Bukowski, PG, PMP
Chief Operations Officer
A Roadmap for Growth & Sustainability
Despite some initial challenges brought on with this new type of project, Ascent successfully delivered the final product to North Wind Group’s team on-time and under-budget. North Wind Group’s team also received extremely positive feedback on the business strategy ideas developed with Ascent’s assistance.
The project was a success thanks to Ascent’s diligence and sense of urgency, coupled with North Wind Group’s welcoming attitude and openness to embracing new ideas.
Now, with an optimized plan for future success, North Wind Group looks forward to putting that plan into action. Ascent and North Wind Group’s work on this project has also laid the foundation for more potential projects in the future as their construction division continues to grow and evolve.
