Pathfinder Awards
HDR has a set of annual awards recognizing outstanding achievements in productivity, leadership, creativity, community and teamwork. These awards are known as the Pathfinder Awards. The awards start off at the local level and progress to national awards. Three additional levels of recognition are also awarded: Gold, Crystal and "with distinction" (the last being the highest).
Corporate Information Services usually does pretty well when it comes to winning our share of these, but this we really cleaned up. And for the first time that I can recall, we had a Gold award winner. Not just in IS, but in my section: Larry Steinle, Gold Award, creativity. Larry's exceptional, tireless and often ingenious efforts to make our cost recovery systems more efficient finally got him some of the credit he deserves.
Angelo Privetera, HDR's CIO (left) congratulates Larry.
Frankly, this probably couldn't have happened to a better person at a better time for a better reason. While I proud I can call Larry my teammate, I'm happier that I can call him my friend. Granted, we don't always see eye to eye, but he's always somebody I can respect for doing his job well and taking the initiative to do learn new ways to do it better. I kind of got Larry a bit into writing (we both worked on this book) and I'm hoping I can get him going again. He's got a lot to offer us.
In the past, I've been blessed to win the local, Corporate division awards for creativity and have been a member of two teamwork award winners. This year, the software development team for HDR's Strategic Planning Information Management Systems (SPIMS, in retrospect, an awful name) won the local corporate award. While the project was -- at times -- very stressful on all of us, I think it did really show that our customers, our talented designers and our development staff really can work together for the better of all.
But I do need to get Angelo drinking better beer...