8 Questions With..

Gary Voirol, president of MSKTD & Associates, Inc.
Jul 3, 2019
Alicia Tharp
Jeffrey Crane
8 Questions With..

Gary Voirol started as an intern and has worked his way to president of MSKTD & Associates. As president, he is focused on continuing to deliver a high level of service to MSKTD’s clients and fostering a successful work environment for employees.

Q1: How has your time been in your new role as president?

It has been going very well! My job shifted from being the vice president to president in January of this year. Everyone at MSKTD, as well as all my friends and family have been very supportive. I am just blessed to have talented people around me everyday. That makes my job a little easier and fun at the same time.

Q2: Can you tell us about what MSKTD does for its customers? 

MSKTD has worked hard for over 40 years to provide quality architectural design and engineering services to our commercial and industrial clients. We really want the best for our customers. That means being good listeners, being responsive, being innovative and being sensitive to everyone who will work, play, learn, heal or live in the structures we design. It also means getting to know and understand those who put their trust in us.

Q3: How has your career path led you to MSKTD? 

That’s a great question because it’s almost hard for most people to believe when I tell them. I sometimes think it was destiny. I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, so when I was looking for a required internship while going to Ball State University for my architecture degree, I really needed to stay at home because I didn’t have much money. College was expensive and I was doing all I could to be self-reliant. Trying to get a job in the architecture field during the early ‘80s was not easy — the construction industry and the economy as whole was in a bit of a down turn. I sent my resume to a lot of places and was surprised to get an interview with a small company run by a few guys who had recently broke away from another firm in Fort Wayne. I was able to convince them they really needed me! I landed a job there (it was our current company but called Moake Sheldon Kratzat at the time) running a lot of ammonia blue prints, doing various errands and getting to perform a small amount of drafting and design on various projects. It was my first job in the a/e industry and I loved it. Everyone worked hard but we had a lot of fun, too. So after graduating from Ball State and graduate school at the University of Illinois, I called them back and was able to secure a full-time position as a graduate architect. One thing led to the next and now 34 years later I was given the opportunity to be the new president. Not many can say they went from starting as an intern at a company and move all the way up to eventually become president. It’s truly an honor.

Q4: What are some of the challenges you are facing at MSKTD and what opportunities do you see?

The obvious challenges are all around us and we at MSKTD are not immune to them either! They include getting highly trained architects and engineers to come, work and live in Fort Wayne (although that is getting easier with all of the buzz about Fort Wayne going on) and project compression (getting things done in shorter periods of time). We must also equip our staff with the best tools to do their job so they can balance work and life, as well as mentor our new employees. Today’s project schedules have made it more difficult to spend time mentoring our younger staff. We also find it increasingly difficult to provide quality control as things get shoved out the door faster and faster. So we are now spending direct time pairing our senior staff with our younger staff and letting them learn from each other.

The opportunities? Oh, they are really exciting to think about! They include continuing to work with fantastic clients that appreciate great design because they know what it can do for their business and continuing our tradition of providing a flexible and rewarding work environment for our staff to do their jobs.

Q5: Tell us about your family and what you like to do when you are not at work?

I met my wife Teresa at Ball State University in 1980 and we dated most of the time in college. We got married after she graduated from graduate school just over 33 years ago. She has encouraged and supported me the entire time during our time together. She was a software developer at GTE until we had our third child. Together we have a daughter, Jenna, who is an OB/GYN physician in Indianapolis. We also have two sons — David, who is a software engineer at Sweetwater Sound and our youngest son Grant, who just graduated from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida this past May with a B.S. degree in marine and atmospheric science and who was also on their shark research team. He is planning now to go to graduate school. I am very proud of all of them. When I am not working, I love to spend time with my family traveling, biking, playing golf, fishing, working on small projects around the house or just hanging out with family and friends.

Q6: What do the next five to ten years look like at MSKTD?

They look to be pretty exciting and a bit challenging. Our portfolio of design work continues to get better and better all the time. Our corporate clients like Ash Brokerage, Franklin Electric, SDI and Ruoff Mortgage expect innovation and we deliver. Our advanced manufacturing and hygienic design group works all over the United States and in foreign countries. They are working with large Fortune 500 companies on very sophisticated projects. The health care group has become a leader in Indiana working for top tier health care systems and our academic group is constantly teaming with strategic partners and competing every day with some of the best design firms in the country. We are striving to get better and better — not bigger. If we can listen, respond and deliver quality projects, we won’t have to focus on growth, it will come naturally.

I think one of the biggest challenges we face today is that we have a generation of staff at MSKTD who have been with us a long time. Finding new people to replace them will not be easy! They have a wealth of knowledge that is invaluable. This is a very talented team that has gotten us to where we are today and i am humbled to know them.

Q7: What advice would you give the next generation of leaders in Fort Wayne?

  • I believe leaders need to be sensitive to their entire staff and treat them with respect and understanding.
  • We need to be more forgiving… I think that is a good thing. We are all human and we all make mistakes (at least I do!). If you think about it, architecture is about the expectation of designing and engineering a prototype facility that is suppose to be perfect…but we as designers rarely get the chance to see our work made over again…so it’s supposed to be right the first time! I am prone to being a bit more forgiving since I had to learn it once myself (and I’m still learning…). 

Q8: What does a normal day look like for you?

Most of my day is now spent working on our employee benefits and policies, some general and project specific marketing, spending time building client relationships and on occasion getting to perform some architectural design and project management for my favorite clients.


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