Ditesco

Ditesco is a civil engineering, program, project, and construction management firm located in Fort Collins, CO. The organization primarily does work involving utilities, water and wastewater treatment facilities, transportation, public spaces, and municipal broadband. Ditesco often bridges the gap in knowledge and staff resources between a project owner like a city or county government and the contractors, architects, and engineers who ultimately execute the project.

Ditesco was founded in 2006 by president Keith Meyer, starting on his dining room table. The word "Ditesco" is a combination of two Latin words: "dito", to enrich, and "esco", to become. This is more fully fleshed out in the company's mission, "to enrich our client’s project delivery experience by providing exceptional service and value," and their vision of "maximizing relationships to deliver successful projects that enhance communities."

Character

Ditesco's leadership character starts with its core values of dedicated, honest, collaborative, and trusted. These values set the tone for the organization and help guide decision making to ensure that the focus stays on the company's founding mission and vision. These traits come together in Ditesco's "project-first" mentality, where the focus is on the needs of the client and project rather than the needs of individuals or even Ditesco as a whole.

Ditesco's leadership also practices radical candor in their communications with the rest of the company. This means operating with complete transparency and honesty. One example of this in practice is the four helpful lists, which ask an employee what is right, wrong, confused, or missing about a project. This leads to candid and productive conversations about how to move forward in the best interests of the project and client.

Culture

Reinforcing Ditesco's culture starts with two annual retreats. One in the summer is for leadership to strengthen their own relationships as well as set strategic priorities. Then in the fall the whole company has another retreat where those strategic priorities are broken down into concrete goals and objectives in support of those goals. This helps everyone from top to bottom have ownership and buy-in for that year's plans.

When looking to hire for their team, Ditesco focuses first and foremost on a candidate's values and ethics. The first interview in the process is spent getting to know a candidate on a more personal level, asking about their hobbies, interests, and passions rather than focusing on work experience or skills. Key traits Ditesco looks for in candidates are the ability to learn, enjoying being challenged, a team-first mentality, and good communication skills.

Customers

As Ditesco primarily works on public infrastructure projects, the company takes its responsibility as a steward of public funds very seriously. It is even more important that projects are completed on time, within the budget, and to a high degree of quality and professionalism when taxpayer dollars are being spent. This is where Ditesco's project first approach is especially useful, as it keeps the focus on serving the needs of the project stakeholders, including the public.

Ditesco also extends a belief in honesty and transparency to their customers. When one customer approached Ditesco to ask what could be done to add additional life to a series of structures, the company performed a thorough evaluation. Ditesco had to tell the customer that nothing could be done to increase the life of the structures and it was best for them to be torn down and replaced if necessary. While not the answer the customer wanted to hear, it confirmed Ditesco's commitment to not avoiding frank or difficult conversations and helped build a trusted relationship with that client.

Community

As many of Ditesco's projects involve infrastructure that will impact many members of the community, the company also has a commitment to being involved with and supporting those communities. To that end Ditesco has a volunteer time off program where for every two hours of volunteer time, an employee earns one additional hour of paid time off. In addition employees who hit 80 hours of volunteer time also receive a donation from Ditesco to a nonprofit of their choice.

Ditesco is also heavily invested in training the next generation of engineers through their internship program. The company has partnerships with Colorado State University, the University of Colorado, and Colorado School of Mines among others to provide internship opportunities. These internships give students the chance to gain work experience even during their education and help them begin the process of translating the theories and ideas they learned in school to real world projects.