Engineering Value Capture
Performance improvement, M&A and operational turnarounds across industrials, financial services, life sciences, energy, retail and technology. Chief transformation officer at Berkadia, a Berkshire Hathaway and Jefferies company. Practice leadership at BDO and SSA & Company, and an advisory company of my own. More than fifty engagements.
Currently a managing director at Beckway.
Serving customers who are the largest technology companies in the world.
Scaling fabrication against data center power demand.
Digital transformation in the age of AI.
Most underperformance gets diagnosed as an execution problem. Often it isn't.
The first cut is whether the business model is sound and the operation can't deliver it, or the model itself is the problem. A strategy problem doesn't yield to an operating program, and an operating problem doesn't need a new strategy. Getting that backwards is how a year disappears.
When it is operational, the money sits in one of four places. Three of them are usually attacked the right way. Cost is the one that isn't, so it gets one more question before anything is costed.
More out of the same assets and people.
20% more output from a rebuilt 50-person center
Work and decisions that take too long.
A budget process cut from ten months to ninety days
Pricing, win rates, mix and capacity sold.
Over 10% revenue uplift on flat headcount
Built into a design, or in how the business runs.
The question below
When the money is in cost
Trimming budgets doesn't touch this cost. The design has to change. Four places it hides:
The design is sound and the execution isn't. Productivity, procurement, throughput, discipline.
Most businesses need both, and the sequence matters. Run-rate savings come fast and can fund the design work.
Chief transformation officer · enterprise operating plan · interim operations leadership · strategic project intake
As chief transformation officer and a member of the management committee, reporting to the CEO, ran the internal strategy-execution team folding acquired and legacy deal-delivery functions into one digital platform. Restructured a 50-person marketing and research center; stood up the project intake function across 50+ strategic projects. Global team of 14 across the US and India.
Compressed a budget process spanning twelve reserve banks, the Board of Governors and national IT. Also led the operational risk framework for mission-critical processes and the reengineering of IT asset management, as business partner to four groups.
Operational due diligence · 100-day planning · integration and synergy capture · carve-outs · integration management office · exit prep
A sponsor-backed components platform acquiring a larger competitor. Ran operational diligence and the 100-day plan, and consolidated operations in two states into a single Florida site.
Ran the integration management office for a property and casualty carrier being separated from its bank holding parent against a fixed close date: 20+ workstreams, TSA structure, Day-1 readiness.
Post-merger integration at a regional bank following its acquisition by a European parent, with cycle times cut 85–90% across the processes in scope.
Self-funding workout plans · board and credit-side engagement · interim operations leadership · recapitalization support
Engaged by the board of a trucking company owned by a private equity sponsor and a credit manager. Built a self-funding workout plan carrying ten quarters of forecasted cash flow, with a service-center network indexed on bills processed and the centers demand had left taken out. The plan ran through to a recapitalization and the company's sale to a new sponsor.
Took interim operations leadership at a regional provider whose install backlog was throttling revenue. Rebuilt the install workflow and added cybersecurity controls.
Design-led cost release · SG&A reduction · consolidation · shared services · supply chain and network
A hardware co-op becoming a sponsor-owned omni-channel distributor and retailer, still carrying the cost base of the business it used to be. Delivered the SG&A reduction plan across corporate functions.
Supply chain work behind a growth-equity capital injection into an internet and TV retailer expanding across Eastern Europe. Moved the network onto a scalable, transaction-based model and took cost out of it.
Lean and Six Sigma deployment · design for Six Sigma · program governance · belt training and mentoring · throughput and capacity
Post-crisis turnaround at a global industrial conglomerate. Governed more than 200 Lean and Six Sigma projects across four continents, beating first-year EBIT and cash targets by a quarter, and ran the design-for-Six-Sigma champion program behind it.
Took over a stalled improvement program across ten preclinical sites as interim head, against a $15–20M line of sight.
Stood up business process management at a $2B education division: project selection and governance across three waves, a dozen process leads and black belts recruited and trained, and status carried to the CEO council.
Built an operational excellence curriculum and coached officer-led improvement projects across more than thirty US Air Force and joint bases under the Army 2020 program, under contract to a prime contractor.
Transformation office · technology PMO · process ownership and governance · AI where it moves the P&L
Began with the president of a water recycling division and returned 32.7 times fees, which led to work with the CEO and board: cost optimization, finance transformation, data integration, and AI to route water profitably through a network of disposal wells.
Redesigned the operating model across 160 decentralized test-prep centers using value stream mapping, then stood up the transformation team and the belt training behind it.
Figures are as recorded at the close of each engagement. Where a result was a plan rather than a realized number, it says so. Returns expressed as a multiple of fees are labelled that way.
BTech, Indian Institute of Technology Madras — 1997
MS, University of Missouri — 2001, top of class
Program on Negotiation and Leadership, Harvard Law School — 2013
I started as a shipyard engineer, building naval vessels where a design mistake shows up in steel. A few years later I was taking cost out of a washing machine pump. The two decades since have been the same exercise at the scale of whole companies.
Work on six continents. English, Bengali and Hindi; working Russian. Princeton, New Jersey.