As this year marks Harrington Group, Inc.’s 40th anniversary of providing fire protection engineering services, we’ve been reflecting on the six core values that have shaped this firm from the beginning: service, competence, quality, honesty, integrity, and respect. Each one matters. Each one shows up in how we work. And none of them stand alone.
We’ve been sharing a little about each value throughout our anniversary year. We talked about quality. We talked about competence. Today we want to talk about respect, because it might be the one that touches the most ground in how our fire protection engineers approach every project, and in how we show up for the people we work alongside every day.
What respect looks like for our clients
When a client brings us a problem, the most respectful thing our fire protection engineering consultants can do is listen before we start talking. That might sound simple, but it’s easy to skip in a specialized field. After 40 years and projects across the US and into Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, we’ve learned that every client’s situation is different. The codes, the building, the stakes, the constraints, none of it is exactly the same twice.
Respect for a client means taking their problem seriously on its own terms. It means being honest when a proposed approach isn’t the right one, even when that’s a harder conversation. It means our fire protection engineers show up prepared and communicate clearly throughout a project, not just at the start and finish. The client relationships that have meant the most to us over the years, the ones that have lasted through multiple projects and multiple decades, were built on that foundation.
What respect looks like for our team
At HGI, people feel genuinely valued. That’s something we work at every day, not something we take for granted.
It means that voices at every level of the organization are worth hearing. It means that when a team member raises a concern or brings a new idea, the response is engagement. It means that leadership is accessible, not just in theory, but in practice. And, it means that the people who join HGI are treated as professionals who have real contributions to make from day one.
40 years, one standard
What strikes us most, looking back, is that the standard hasn’t changed. The firm has grown. The projects have gotten more complex. The team of fire protection engineers and engineering consultants is larger. But the expectation that we treat everyone with respect, whether they’re a client trusting us with a critical project or a new hire finding their footing, has been there since the beginning.
That consistency is something we’re proud of. And it’s something we intend to carry forward.
Interested in joining the HGI team? View our open positions.