Companies boost morale post-Katrina - New Orleans City Business

From left: Walter Stenhouse and Joseph Klimas, mechanical engineers,
look over plans with Neal Christoph, project manager, and AGA client
Wayne Lolan, engineering manager for Louisiana Offshore Oil Port.
ALBERT-GARAUDY
AND ASSOCIATES
KATRINA HIGHLIGHTS
• Continued payroll
• Relocation of 100 Metairie employees to its
Houston office; rented a block of apartments
in Houston at an approximate cost of
$300,000
• Houston employees collected pots, pans,
clothing and other housing supplies to
donate to Metairie staff
Source: CityBusiness staff research
the Metairie staff. Houston employees collected clothes, pots,
pans and other housing supplies to donate to incoming
Metairie employees. Garaudy and Albert returned with their
Houston IT staff to Metairie, escorted by Causeway Police,
to retrieve company servers. They brought the servers to
Houston, reinstalled the company data and got everything
back up and running in a week’s time.
Garaudy said employee payroll continued uninterrupted.
Some employees were given raises to equate to what employees
in Houston regularly received.
“We had some emotional ups and downs but people were just
thrilled they had a job to fall back on,” he said. “They were safe
and they were healthy.Management always associates its own personal
lives with our employees. We say, ‘What would I want done
to us? How would we want a business to react to us?’”
Through the relocation process, AGA lost one Metairie
employee from the original staff.
AGA reopened its Metairie office in October. Garaudy estimates
about 50 employees have moved back. Plans are in place
to move the other 50 back as projects dictate. Apartments in
Houston still are on monthly leases, and Garaudy estimates by
the time all Metairie employees return, expenses for AGA will
come close to $500,000.
“It’s worth it to take care of our employees,” Garaudy said.
The option of keeping AGA in Houston was never entertained,
said Garaudy.
“It’s an emotional thing. My partner and I were both born
and raised here and have deep roots here,” he said. “And more
importantly, clients in Houston and even in New Orleans are
always complimentary of the quality of work that comes out of
this Metairie office. It was important to us to keep this office and
the employees here.”
Garaudy said AGA performs routine employee surveys
to gauge what’s important to the staff. Their No. 1 response
was personal relationships with management, followed by
qualifications of staff and experience and qualifications of
management staff.
“They value that we’re always communicating with them
and we have management who they can learn from and keep
them challenged in their work,” he said.
Garaudy said AGA offers continued training for employees,
3-D design technology programs and memberships in professional
trade organizations to keep employees afloat on the latest
industry trends and developments.
AGA was listed in the Top 10 of the ZweigWhite Hot Firm
list and among the top 100 engineering firms in the nation by
Consulting-Specifying Engineer, an industry journal.• The Albert-Garaudy and Associates Structural Engineering Department has returned to the Metairie office on Causeway Boulevard.
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