Beyond our experience and academic achievements (see Dragun’s Team Bios), what are our guiding principles, and what should you expect when working with Dragun? We believe we can best answer that by sharing our Core Values.
The Dragun Corporation’s Core Values
More than 30-years ago, Dragun developed our Core Values. These values are displayed in our offices and discussed at every weekly staff meeting. In other words, they are lived, and we hold one another accountable to these values.
Attitude: We cannot affect the things that happen to us; we can only choose our response to the events; therefore, we alone are responsible for maintaining a good attitude. Our good attitude will contribute to providing an excellent working environment.
Respect: We will respect that our clients have trusted us with their project. That our clients have chosen our company is an honor; we will treat it as an honor. We will respect our colleagues and allow for disagreement while maintaining mutual respect. Respect comes down to “Treat others as you would want to be treated.”
Trust: We understand and accept that trust is not given; it is earned. We will do all that we can to earn our clients’ trust. This implies that we must understand the science and engineering as well as the regulations that affect our clients.
Professionalism: We will be professional in appearance, action, and attitude at all times. Everything that we produce will reflect this commitment to professionalism.
Responsibility: We recognize that for this to be a successful company requires that each individual act in a responsible manner. We are each responsible for quality, turnaround time, communications, and exceeding the expectations of our clients. We will take ownership of issues that we encounter until a proper resolution has been reached.
Integrity: Above all else, we will operate day-to-day with integrity. Integrity is defined as moral soundness, which is the core value that dictates our actions.
Commitment: We will be committed to our clients’ success and the success of our colleagues, which will lead to the success of our company. Commitment implies communication; communication requires that we listen.
Ethics: We will always behave in an ethical manner and expect the same from our colleagues, subcontractors, and clients. This ethic extends to every project, which means that we will never offer advice that is in any way unethical.
From these values, we developed the following brief guidance:
Principled Foundation | Thoughtful Advice | Smart Solutions.
Some relevant anecdotes from our projects:
One anecdote is about a client who stayed engaged with Dragun even when his new job took him several hundred miles across the county, far from our office. We continued to advise him (at his new company) at sites around the country. He also called us when the EPA believed his new company was a PRP at a Superfund Site in the middle of the country (happily, we helped them avoid any “involvement”).
We can share with you how we helped one client on numerous projects for over 25 years. We assisted him with complicated merger/acquisitions, remediation efforts, and site closures on the East and West Coasts of the US (one project resulted in a seven-figure cost saving). This client sent us a letter thanking us for saving them money, and he stated that he truly enjoyed working with us.
Other clients have asked us to assist them in foreign countries because they told us, quite simply, they trusted we would look after their interests.
We’ve assisted our clients in solving numerous challenging projects, including
- A precedent-setting closure
- Negotiations with the Federal Government
- Projects that went to State and US Supreme Courts
- Closed projects that had lingered for years with another consultant.
Our “Secret”
Our secret formula isn’t making sure we are using the latest and greatest technology (though we love technology). Our secret is much more basic: it’s about the human element.
We have clients that have been with us nearly as long as we have been in business (we opened in 1988). Yes, we do take pride in our scientific and regulatory knowledge, but we like to think we have practical knowledge, which helps us find us to find practical solutions.
We take great care in hiring really exceptional people and keeping them. Our project managers have decades of experience, and on average, they have spent a majority of those years here at Dragun. We really do play together well, and we work together even better.
The other aspect of our success is that we approach every project with a “litigation mindset.” When the late Dr. James Dragun founded the company in 1988, it was established as an expert services firm. Since day one, we have provided expert environmental services up to and including providing expert testimony in the courtroom. So whether we are providing environmental due diligence, environmental compliance, or soil and groundwater assessment/remediation, we do so with scientific rigor – because any project can end in litigation.
Consistency and Results
So, why Dragun? Because we will offer consistency in your project management, advice that will help you avoid unnecessary headaches, and proven solutions that have saved our clients millions of dollars – and, according to our parents, we’re nice people.
We hope you will consider engaging our team, whether in our US office or our Canadian office. We would be happy to share with you many more anecdotes about how we have helped our clients find solutions. Give us a call, or let us know if you want to chat over a cup of coffee… We like meeting new people and always love a good, technical challenge.
About our health and safety measures
Safety is the responsibility of all our associates – managers, supervisors, and our environmental consulting experts. The Dragun Corporation is committed to providing a safe workplace consistent with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. To that end, we take every reasonable effort to eliminate the hazards that cause accidents and injuries. Safe practices and procedures are defined in our site-specific Health and Safety Plans and Standard Operating Procedures for all associates to follow.
About how we “give back”
The staff of Dragun Corporation takes pride in supporting the communities in which we live and serve.
Our associates across the board “give back” by regularly volunteering time and resources to charitable and nonprofit organizations, including the American Cancer Society, Boy Scouts of America, Food Banks, local Emergency Services, Hospitals, and more.
“I want to thank you for the consistently excellent quality of work that your company has done for a large number of our clients. It has been distressing to…review sloppy environmental assessment reports based on inadequate investigations by other firms; consequently, good work like yours is particularly welcome.” – Jack Shumate, Attorney Butzel Long