Innovation From Within: WGI’s Associates Pitch Ideas for the Future

WGI associates participated in an internal contest to pitch innovative ideas to improve the company, their work product, and the built environment.

One of WGI’s Core Values is “Be the Change You Seek”, and our associates recently had an opportunity to do just that – by pitching their innovative ideas and stepping into the “Shark Tank”.

WGI is committed to innovation and demonstrating this was the first annual WGI Innovation Contest. The contest is meant to highlight some of the creative and game-changing ideas of our associates and shining a light on how we are bringing the best ones to life.

In addition to the technical and business evaluations, the competition also had its share of fun by recreating it as our own “Shark Tank” style contest where the entrepreneurs were “intrapreneurs” and the “sharks” were members of our senior leadership team.

Innovation Contest at WGI — Teams pitched their innovative ideas to impact the company, improve efficiency, help us better serve clients.

Narrowing the Field

Associates collaborated on their innovative ideas – big or small — that could positively impact the company, improve efficiency, help us better serve our clients, or improve the way we design the world around us.

With over 80 participants and 50+ entries from around the country and across disciplines entering the competition, the judges reviewed the entries and narrowed down the field to 10 finalists.
The finalists were given the opportunity to pitch their innovative ideas live via Zoom, and answer questions from the panel of judges (who did a fantastic job doubling as the “Sharks”).

WGI innovation and technology — Over 80 associated participated in the first annual Innovation Contest.

Ideas to Accelerate

After the judges deliberated and debated the merits of each presentation, three winning teams emerged as winners and will be supported by the company to move their initiatives forward in 2021.

Without giving too many secrets away, here are the winning ideas that are being implemented:

Create an internal knowledge management platform that is geo-enabled and powered by our resume of great projects across the country.
Ramping up our visualization capabilities with a group dedicated to producing high-quality graphical models to give our clients greater insight and visual understanding of their projects.
Creating an asset management platform that uses AI for lidar conversion and automatically updates the asset records.

Let’s Keep Innovating

WGI is dedicated to cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit, embracing technology and innovation, and empowering our associates to create the future.

Each of the winning ideas from the contest are already being implemented, and we look forward to hearing the ideas that our associates want to bring to life next!

Join The Team

If you’re interested in working with the most innovative team members, check out our opportunities and apply today!

Gregory Sauter

Gregory Sauter, president of WGI, is a founder of Smart City Works, the world’s first infrastructure actuator. The firm focuses on accelerating infrastructure innovation and commercialization, bringing to life promising business ideas and helping companies catalyze and rethink civil infrastructure innovation — helping meet the needs of 21st-century communities and their growing populations. Gregory is also past president and chief executive of Crossroads Advisory, servicing infrastructure and technology companies. He and his team advanced executive leadership and transformative organizational outcomes, while focusing on culture, innovation, ethics, integrity, and authentic leadership.

Gregory has 30 years in the engineering and construction industry and is a Professional Engineer with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, a Master of Science degree in Civil/Environmental Engineering from the University of Alabama, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Rutgers University.