After 30 years of success, the co-owners of Vaughn & Melton Consulting Engineering, Lewis N. Melton and Robert W. Vaughn, were ready to retire. But closing their firm was not an option, so they needed a successor with both civil engineering expertise and management skills.

Enter Randolph Scott, a Vaughn & Melton client-turned-CEO, who has combined his years of experience as a civil engineer with the business acumen to navigate the Kentucky-based company through the recession’s stormy waters. He transformed the design-based firm into a business with a heavy emphasis on construction. “We build highways, we build bridges and we build water and sewer plants,” said Scott.

Along with a shift toward construction, Vaughn & Melton, Inc. has survived by marketing itself toward government projects. These include designing Interstate 66 in Kentucky, reviewing the construction of the Lick Creek Valley Sanity Sewer System, and designing the Western North Carolina Veterans Cemetery. Over 90 percent of the firm’s business comes from the public sector, and those projects have kept the business afloat during the economic downturn. “We’re in the infrastructure business, so the increased spending had a positive impact on us,” said Scott.

Scott, an MBA holder, feels that entrepreneurship is necessary to growth in good times as well as bad. Taking risks and never settling are his personal keys to success. “Never surround yourself with comfort,” he told The Suit. “Never live where you’re totally comfortable; never have the friends that you’re totally comfortable with; never have the lifestyle that you’re totally comfortable with. Always push a little bit.”


www.vaughnmelton.com