Building a higher standard: Investing in operational excellence – Nilson Goes | President at Infinite Energy

Ethan Whitehill: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our podcast “To The Point.” I’m Ethan Whitehill, president and chief strategy officer at Crux the “un-agency.” We produce this monthly podcast to bring you thought provoking conversations that get to the crux of it and help entrepreneurial brands fuel growth. Our guest for episode 30 is Nilson Goes. Nilson is president at Infinite Energy, a general contractor serving federal utility and institutional clients throughout the United States with construction and engineering services. Nilson has a background in healthcare leadership in biopharmaceuticals and holds a graduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis. In 2013, he became the chief operating officer of Infinite Energy and later advanced to the role of president in 2019. Nilson, welcome to the show.

Nilson Goes: Hey, thanks, Ethan. Glad to be here.

Ethan Whitehill: So, all right. I’d love to start by diving into your background. How did you get into engineering and construction given where you were coming from? And how did each of those experiences lead you to the helm of IEC?

Nilson Goes: Sure. So, this is kind of a fun story to tell, but my family immigrated from Brazil back in the ’80s, and my father was getting his PhD as an electrical engineer at a school that used to be called Missouri Rolla. Now it’s called S&T. And so, I grew up in an engineering family, and so the company that I now lead was started by my father some 29 years ago. So, I grew up working at Infinite Energy, really as a much younger person. And so it was always kind of in my blood. Educational pursuits are something that’s really important in our family. And so after I did my undergrad in Texas, I had an opportunity to kind of start a career path in Southern California where I really leaned in, but always kind of had my heart back in infinite energy and wanted to come back at some point. I kind of viewed my time there as really a blessing, but also to kind of put tools in my chest that I could one day go back and apply. There was intentionality to come back and apply those things to infinite energy.

Ethan Whitehill: And it sounds like what you came back to, you know, it was changing. You had a lot of opportunity to do some different things. And so, since your founding, you’ve expanded into new markets and competencies through divisions like transmission and distribution, which specializes in substation engineering. Tell us more about that evolution and the intention behind it.

Nilson Goes: Sure. So Infinite Energy started as an electrical contractor, primarily serving industrial markets. So, if you think back, the ’90s were a very different industrial market, primarily in Kansas City. So that Fairfax district looked a little bit different, right? So. We serve clients that did a lot of manufacturing, Ford, General Motors, Owens Cornering, Lake City Army and Ammunition Plant, those types of folks. As we got into the GC market as construction managers, we solely focused on federal clients. So that includes Army, Air Force, Navy expanded the FAA, the Department of Energy, and very soon we started finding a cadence and, and establishing, “hey, this is what we do, and this is what we’re good at.” We call it mission critical, very little altitude for mistakes, slipping of schedule, you know, change orders, things like that. Takes a lot of planning. And that drove a lot of our culture.

And when I came in, as anytime you have an introduction of new leadership, people have different ideas, right? And our backgrounds influenced that. So, when I had the opportunity to get into the engineering space, really a couple things influenced it, but one primarily is I just saw the runway for this was just extensive over the next 10, 20, 30 years. You know, we’re going to keep electrifying our lives and we’re going to be plugging more and more things in. And I thought, “what better place to be than having some kind of participation in this market?” And the engineering specifically was kind of a return to the start, right? Yeah. It paid homage to really how my family came to the country and how we started our journey, and we got our start here. So it’s been great. It’s something that I’m goin to continue to invest in alongside our construction. The really fun thing is that they play really well together, of course, right? So the engineering can complement the construction and vice versa. And so, there’s a lot more chapters in the book that still are going to be written

Ethan Whitehill: That’d be a good book. And, you know maybe one chapter in that book might be about relationships because you know, obviously as the company’s evolved and you’ve developed new skill sets and acumen and competencies, and you’ve become credible for all those things, relationships still are at the foundation of all of it. Sure. And you’ve built and maintained a really strong brand and reputation. How have you done that?

Nilson Goes: You know, I wish that there was like some one sentence response to that, but really we’ve been really fortunate. Kansas City has been just a really great place to start and build a business. Within the business community and in the civic community, we’ve managed to make a lot of really powerful relationships that have defined our growth trajectory. Serving on boards with folks that work in big companies in town can lead to opportunities, and that’s been huge. Anybody that knows anything about Infinite Energy knows that we have a very close relationship with Burns & McDonnell. And that’s just one example of some of those relationships where we met just by having common values, common culture. And then just being very deliberate about investing in those relationships. We have a lot of intentionality in the types of companies and the types of relationships that we build. And that’s done really well for us. And I don’t think that the growth and all the different chapters we referenced could be written without that key ingredient of relationships.

Ethan Whitehill: And you mentioned culture, and in a previous conversation we talked quite a bit about how IEC has always been committed to building a diverse workforce, right? And that’s kind of a part of who you’ve been and your culture. And that was before DE and I was even a term in the political or social consciousness. Why was that a priority to you?

Nilson Goes: You know, I think it’s primarily a business strategy. You know, I look around like if we look at like all the cities around the United States and look at the ones that are the biggest economic powerhouses: Seattle, heck Dallas–it doesn’t really matter if it’s north or south–New York, certainly. Those cities that have the most amount of commerce that are doing the most things, have commonality, the common denominator, of having a lot of diversity. So, I think once you do that, you have a lot of different ways of looking at things that ultimately creates a business advantage. So, you’re right, this was long before DE and I became a political topic or you know, a word to throw around. And, but it’s, it’s been one that I, you know, I continue to do. And I’ve seen a lot of other companies that at this time when people are having conversations and having very strong opinions about topics like this you start seeing where their heads are and where their hearts are.

Ethan Whitehill: It reminds me of an author, Richard Florida, who wrote a lot about the competitiveness of cities and Kansas City kind of embraced him early on when he was first publishing on this. And he had something called the diversity index. And he said, you can kind of tell what cities are going to succeed based on the diversity that they attract in their workforce. And it’s all kinds of diversity. It’s not just a specific diversity. And to that point, I would say you’ve got an interesting way of looking at diversity too, because you have a lot of veterans in your workforce, right? Talk to us about the value that you see in veterans as employees.

Nilson Goes: You know, when people ask about this, I always tell them like, “hey, if you want to talk about like our, our community give back or our philanthropy or anything like that, I’m happy to do that, but this is not one of those topics.” This is very much a self-serving strategy. It’s one of the very few that I think that benefits my competition, that I’m happy to share. You know, hiring for what we do, our mission critical culture of operating with a sense of mission, veterans plug so well into that business model. And we find that by creating programs and opportunities to help, especially veterans that are transitioning out that’s a tough transition for somebody who’s always had a very clear, defined sense of mission. “Be here, do this,” those types of things. And these are very talented folks. They just need a little bit of help transitioning to a different ecosystem.

And so, we’ve participated in programs called Skill Bridge, and for companies that don’t know it, I would encourage everybody to look it up. What it does is a transitioning veteran can essentially apply for this, and for the last three to six months of their enlisted service, they can essentially have an internship with a business. Getting qualified to do this is very straightforward and it allows for a very low risk entrance into the market and allows them to build some relevant experience. And so, we’ve done that at scale across all of our offices and it’s been really great.

Ethan Whitehill: Yeah. No, I love that. And I think I saw a stat you hire six times more than the typical industry when it comes to veteran hires.

Nilson Goes: Yeah, you’re right. You know, it ebbs and flows. I say that tongue in cheek because we are really proud of that. But again, I try to tell people like, “do it, do it, do what we’re doing because it’ll benefit your business.” And with that, you know, if you think about who our military servicemen and women are, they’re of different backgrounds. You know, and the people that choose to do that and enter into service, they represent a lot of diversity within those ranks. So, I would encourage everybody to give it a really hard look.

Ethan Whitehill: Yeah. That’s a fantastic program, especially, you know, workforce development is a hot topic. I think that’s a great strategy. I mean, you’ve got a tremendous workforce right there that you can tap into. So, in addition to the work that you do through IEC, you talked a little bit about board service and kind of involvement, community involvement, civic involvement. How has that helped you and shaped you personally and professionally? I think about the Hispanic Chamber as an example.

Nilson Goes: It’s been a really key part of allowing us to essentially to you know, kind of learn the business environment in town. But when we first joined these boards, it wasn’t with, you know, some kind of master strategy to essentially develop a relationship or develop the brand. The Hispanic Chamber is something that we’ve served on for really two generations, my father and now myself, and then I’ve since termed off of that board. But that’s been a great one just to, to understand what the business environment’s like, what the Hispanic business environment is doing. And through that, I’ve met a lot of different folks and been able to participate in a lot of different things that have really helped us make valuable connections. There’s been other organizations in town that, you know, I’ve served on with folks that–it comes back around, and you have an opportunity to, to have relationships by working late nights. These are all volunteer boards, right? After so many years, you build and nurture a network that’s really hard to do otherwise.

Ethan Whitehill: Yeah. Kansas City’s such a great place to do that as well. For sure. You and I had a fun conversation, sort of future casting before we, we started recording here. You’re on the front lines of energy and energy demand through all your work with substations and utilities. Knowing that a lot of our listeners have businesses that require power, you know, and they’re thinking about “what does the future hold for the grid and energy security,” and all those topics. What advice can you give them in terms of where things are going with electrification with just power to their business?

Nilson Goes: Sure. You know I would say watch the space. If we were to have this conversation, I mean, maybe there were some people that were just real visionaries and they really kind of anticipated the scale at which AI would be such a thing five, seven years ago, but most people didn’t. And the power demands that data centers are going to pull, is this something that it would’ve been impossible for us to forecast and therefore plan for? So, you have that in and of itself. And then you also have the fact that a lot of our current systems for transmission and distribution just really need to be updated. So, you have an infrastructure input, you have a demand input, and then you have a generation input to meet the needs of all that. Meanwhile, you still have pressures to keep our eye on carbon emissions and having a portfolio of any energy generation that is, you know, considerate of that.

The way I see it is when you have all these challenges, you also have a lot of opportunities to add value. They’re not gonna be all solved, certainly not in my career, my career path and my glide path. And so, I think it’s a great business to be in, and I think it’ll continue to be a great business. And then we’re trying to position ourselves as a company that invests in the operational excellence–really what these folks really demand. So, we can continue to, to be on that glide path and continue to add value for a lot of generations after me.

Ethan Whitehill: So, thinking about those generations after us, who might be solving some of those problems in the future, what advice do you have for folks that might be starting their careers in engineering and construction and specifically in the space that you’re in as well?

Nilson Goes: You know, I would say be open-minded and take in as much as you can. Get hands-on experience. Watch how people are doing things. And if you’re going into the engineering side of things, you know, get a taste for what the construction is what your designs are when they come to life. What does that look like? And if you’re on the construction side, boy you’re going to have a career for a long time and a really good career. So, I think I would say lean in, you know, continue to try to invest in yourself and develop yourself because this is one of those markets and one of those disciplines that’s constantly changing. You know, the things that were important five years ago have greatly evolved. And so, there’s a lot of common things that, you know, we’re still adhering to, but there’s a lot of things that are changing and just keeping your finger on the pulse is going to be really important.

Ethan Whitehill: Agree. Good advice. Well, that brings us to my mystery question. I think we prepared you a little bit for this just to tell you that you’re not going to be prepared, you’re not going to know what’s coming. And I have my 20-sided die. Okay. So, it could be any of these 20 questions and I’m going to roll to find out what it is. Oh, we got nine. Ah, so what’s something small that instantly makes your day better?

Nilson Goes: You know what, my daughter, she’s an 8-year-old, she’s small. And a lot of the times I have to leave for work before she is out of bed. On the days I get to catch her, I get to start my day with just a little time with her instantly makes my day better.

Ethan Whitehill: I love that. I like this question too because the other day I saw some advice, it said, “instead of thinking about what triggers you think about what glimmers are in your life.” So what are those little glimmers that spark joy in different moments? And sounds like she’s a glimmer.

Nilson Goes: She is, she’s certainly a glimmer. Yeah. I like that question. I’m going to repurpose that one.

Ethan Whitehill: Nilson, how can listeners connect with you or learn more about Infinite Energy?

Nilson Goes: Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. I would encourage anybody that has any questions really about anything we talked about, I’m happy to connect really through all the normal channels. Our website, infiniteenergyconstruction.com. You can call our office here in Kansas City, reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I’m generally a pretty accessible guy.

Ethan Whitehill: Wonderful. Thank you for the conversation today.

Nilson Goes: The pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me.