When Randy Walker retired from Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) in 1996, the thought of returning to the company where he had spent more than 25 years never crossed his mind. However, in 2007, Walker became one of the many KBR retirees who, after hearing that the company had separated from Halliburton and decided to revitalize its presence in the domestic construction market, is once again punching the time clock at KBR’s Houston headquarters.

“I came back because I had the opportunity to meet with [KBR Chairman, President and CEO] Bill Utt and some of the executive team members,” Walker said. “During that session, they outlined the intent to revitalize the domestic construction business of KBR, and I became very excited about being a part of that direction.

“As the message permeates the market about the executive agenda to revitalize the domestic industry, a lot of former employees who left because they didn’t prefer international work are coming back to the company.”

The decision to return to the U.S. market has not only created a buzz among the company’s retirees but also among current KBR clients.

“When we re-engage our domestic customers, they are excited to see KBR’s focus back domestically because they remember what that performance was, and they feel as though it’s missing in the market today,” Walker said.

To help bring back that legacy, KBR hired Walker as vice president of North America construction. After serving in a variety of roles in project management and construction operations during his tenure with the company, Walker brings an extensive knowledge of manufacturing, plant operations, engineering and construction to his current post.

In his position, Walker is responsible for working with the KBR executive team and the KBR Services business unit to revitalize its domestic construction business. He is also responsible for ensuring the organization has access to necessary resources, making sure that the jobs KBR accepts fit into the company’s overall strategy, and ensuring that the employees and contractors who work at KBR jobsites produce the promises and obligations made to the customer, including maintaining KBR’s commitment to working injury free.

Although a busy job, Walker is proud to be involved in bringing back KBR’s domestic presence.

“For me personally, there couldn’t be anything more rewarding than to help build the construction work back to the levels of prominence that legacy Brown and Root experienced,” he said. “If we look back in the ’70s and ’80s, no one built a construction job where KBR wasn’t a part of that conversation. That’s not the case today, and that’s the legacy I intend to leave — to have a significant footprint and regain the reputation of delivering performance so that every owner will start with us in the conversation about construction.”

Dealing with a ‘global issue’

Just like any other company in the industry today, KBR is facing a challenging battle when it comes to securing the work force of tomorrow.

“The work force shortage is unique because this is the first time in my career that this is a global issue,” Walker said. “In today’s market, it has no boundaries.”

To overcome the challenge, Walker said that companies need to learn how to recruit new employees while also extending the career life of those already working in the industry.

“If we don’t solve that problem, then this industry is going to have some growing pains like it’s never had before,” he said. “A lot of companies are focusing on solving the problem through compensation, but we think that is too narrow of a solution. We believe it’s a combination of improved planning at the site level coupled with recruiting, training and compensation of the work force.”

Walker believes that KBR is taking a hands-on approach to dealing with those issues, which, he said, can be an advantage to the customer.

“We’ve recruited, processed and delivered thousands of people to jobsites all over the world. Because of our ability to put people on the ground in any location where we work, we are confident we can bring resource solutions to our customers in the U.S. market,” Walker said. “We also have the history of understanding and taking care of our people, so we know how to build a compensation package that will recruit craftsmen.”

In addition, KBR will open a personnel office in early 2008 that will be located on the Houston Ship Channel.

“We’ve taken a look at where the ‘ebb and flow’ of craftworkers are in today’s market, and we’ve decided that it’s not at [the KBR offices on] Clinton Drive the way it used to be 10 years ago,” Walker said. “So, we are relocating our craft recruiting office to Deer Park, Texas, which is in the heart of the Ship Channel where a significant amount of craftsmen work.

“To be successful, you have to go where the workers are because the transportation and fuel and the demand on their schedule really makes it an undue burden for them to come to us.”
   
HS&E — The window into a company’s abilities
   
With a well-developed HS&E management system that has been honed and refined over a period of 20 years, KBR has demonstrated its commitment to HS&E performance by working on several sites that have lasted 20-25 years without a recordable incident, which shows that working injury free is at the heart of the company.

Walker places a lot of the responsibility on improving KBR’s HS&E performance on the shoulders of the company’s leaders.

“If you look statistically at our performance, we’ve improved 25 percent each year for the past three years,” Walker said. “And a lot of that is because we’ve learned that leadership needs to be out in front, challenging the organization and asking what is needed to improve performance.

“We view the ability to provide construction services through the window of our HS&E performance,” he said. “We don’t think there is anything that holds your competitive focus better than coming to terms with improving your HS&E performance. It’s sort of the window through which you can see the soul of organizational commitment.”

Living in a state of inquiry
   
Originally from Kingsville, Texas, Walker’s road to his current position began when he was working as a laborer for Brown and Root while pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Texas A&I (now referred to as Texas A&M-Kingsville) at night.
   
However, two years into his college career, his managers at Brown and Root noticed that Walker could do isometric drawings, so they offered him a promotion. According to Walker, he took the promotion and “never looked back.”
   
Walker’s journey has been filled with plenty of detours and bumps. However, he has been able to gain valuable insight into being an effective leader.
   
“I’ve come to appreciate that leadership is about influence and management is about direction, and both are required to be successful,” he said. “The trick is to know when you’re leading and when you’re managing.
  
“If I’m out telling somebody what to do, chances are I’m not developing their leadership or management competency because I’m giving them the answer. Leadership is about posing a question that causes someone to engage in an intellectual inquiry that leads them to the right answer.”

Walker also credits a lot of his career success to the fact that in the early days of Brown and Root, company managers were more interested in people who delivered.

“It wasn’t the pedigree that you had that allowed them to promote you; it was the degree to which you could convert all of that education — regardless of what it was or however great or little it was — and all of that experience into performance,” he said. “And they acknowledged, rewarded, promoted and invested in performance. We are actively restoring that here at the ‘new’ KBR.”

Walker also views his former co-workers as mentors and sees them as large influences in his professional career.

“I was fortunate enough in my career to work with people who were always investing in the development of others,” he said. “I came to know an individual who told me one time that, ‘People are either in an inquiry about life or they aren’t.’

“By that, he meant that people who are in an inquiry about life are always looking to improve themselves, so they are a lot more open to being coached and molded and are always setting their own standards higher and higher. Those who aren’t in an inquiry about life are just looking to perform at their lowest level and then go sit down.”

Following the advice of that individual, Walker strives to live each day in a state of inquiry and uses his experience to give advice to the next generation of management.

“I would say be humble, stay humble, never let your ego get bigger than your job and work on yourself constantly,” he said. “By the way human beings are constructed, it’s really hard to go out of your way to get feedback on how effective you were in a particular event or circumstance.

“But, as you move up to where you’re not just assembling widgets anymore or answering questions in a textbook environment, it’s really hard to understand how effective you are if you’re not out asking people.”