12 Days of GBA – Day 7: Best Practices

Summary

Tiffany Vorhies and Ryan White present a year-end series highlighting their favorite GBA resources, counting down from Day 12 to Day 1. GBA's best practices (or "monographs") are short, focused guides that save you from learning lessons the hard way. Tiffany highlights Change Order Management—emphasizing early communication to prevent client surprises—and Straight Talk About Profitability, which reveals that labor utilization matters more than just raising rates. Ryan counters with non-financial favorites: Avoiding Absolutes (one "always" can haunt you forever), Taboo Words, Mentoring Programs, Software Validation, and Documentation practices. Through a lightning round, they showcase resources covering Go/No-Go decisions, insurance basics, e-communication, depositions, and presentations. The takeaway: Pick one best practice your firm already pays for and actually use it this week. Small changes, big payoff.

Links

• Find all of GBA's Best Practices Documents Here


• Change Order Management


• Straight Talk About Profitability


• Avoiding Absolutes


• Taboo Words


• Establishing a Mentoring Program in Your Firm


• Interviewing the Right Way


• Software Validation


• Email, Instant Messaging, Texting, and Other Forms of Electronic Communication


• Project-Records Retention


• Go/No-Go Checklist


• Professional Liability Insurance Basics


• Presentation Fundamentals


• Deposition Do's and Don'ts for Fact Witnesses

Calls-to-action:

• Visit the GBA Website at https://www.geoprofessional.org for other training resources and reference materials and/or to become a member.


• Visit https://www.gbapodcast.com for future Podcast Episodes


• Contact us at info@geoprofessional.org with any podcast-related questions or comments

Subscribe

• Subscribe to the GBA Podcast https://www.gbapodcast.com/subscribe

This episode was produced by the following GBA Members:

• Tiffany Vorhies – Principal, Vice President/SME


• Ryan White, PE, GE – Principal Geotechnical Engineer/Apex Companies, LLC