Building with Vision

Innovation is not often expected from retiring employees. But, Kathleen Acock is not a typical employee. As the daughter of the founder of Alpha Building Corporation, Kathy broke gender roles to become president/CEO of the company and recently turned the reigns over to her son, Jonathon Rogero.

On her way out, Kathy had the vision to improve communications throughout the regional organization and preserve the family business’s culture and 50-year history. The San Antonio-based building company, which began with a NASA contract in Houston, has grown to include offices throughout Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

It was important to effectively share information, and also preserve the “family” culture. An obvious way seemed to be video. By having corporate leaders in San Antonio deliver their messages on video, the reports were made more personal. Alpha’s 2018 Christmas video messages were engaging, entertaining and fun.

The loop was completed with reports from supervisors at the various regional project sites. Projects are as diverse as giraffe feeders at the El Paso Zoo, athletic training facilities at Tarleton State University, and a historic aircraft display at the San Antonio Airport.

To share all this information internally, Alpha set up an internet portal for all its various archives. Plans were made for a periodical Alpha TV program, along with training, safety and other employee video presentations. Alpha TV includes a message from the president, employee spotlights, project updates, human resources information, financial reports, safety tips, and other news. All the Alpha TV content becomes part of the online library, which also includes history, culture, special events, orientation and training videos, in addition to news archives by date.

While all this was going on, Kathy also wanted to document the history of Alpha Building, and did so by producing five videos: One for each decade, which also broke out neatly into the types of projects the company focused on during those periods. The segments included the NASA years, military contracts, work with higher education, job order contracts and regional management clusters. The last video brought the company to 2020 and the transition to the third generation of family leadership.

The fifth video features the 50^th anniversary party, where a great time was had by all on an unseasonably mild February day on the Don Strange Ranch near Welfare, TX. Alpha employees from far and wide attended the anniversary party and had the opportunity to share that storied family culture in person and to kick off a new era.

And as anyone who knows Kathy already knows, she didn’t really retire. She just stepped out of the CEO’s office and continues to work on special projects in marketing, safety, finance and other areas that benefit from her institutional memory, vision and motherly love.