Ghafari Companies

Bruce Babiarz and BAB Associates was hired by Ghafari Associates in 1992 as a consultant to assist the 10-year-old engineering and design firm expand into new market sectors and enhance the young firm’s image in a highly competitive industry with established firms.

Bruce Babiarz accomplishments on behalf of the team at the Ghafari Companies:

1. New logo and corporate identity program still in use to this day.
2. Marketing Plan to grow into new markets (Ghafari was 90% automotive) including higher education, health care, process engineering, corporate office, sports facilities and aviation sectors.
3. First website of an A/E firm in Michigan 1994.
4. Business development initiatives. Helped win projects worth millions locally and globally (23 countries by 1999). Won GM
5. Renaissance Center renovation as “production architects” keeping a team busy and billable for 5 years.
6. Alliance program with Ford Motor Company reducing competitors for work in North America from 157 A/Es to 7.
7. Second A/E firm in the world to earn Ford Q1 quality status rating.
8. Among the first A/E’s to secure ISO 9001 registration.
9. Corporate brochure (wrote and produced).
10. Updated all marketing and media materials.
11. On-line marketing department for ease of producing “customized” proposals.

At the time Babiarz began consulting with Ghafari the firm was operating from rented space and was almost virtually dependent on the automotive industry where some 90% of its revenues were derived. To its credit, President and Founder Yousif B. Ghafari was a visionary in pioneering the use of Computer Aided Design and other technologies. This allowed Ghafari to turn out small engineering and design projects more quickly than what would soon be the obsolete method of hand drafting. Ghafari took to on countless small projects that larger firms frowned on performing. While a typical Architectural Engineering firm may have 300 to 400 projects it invoices in a year, Ghafari was invoicing 3,000 to 4,000 projects.

Ghafari was also visionary enough to use the Public Relations and Marketing services of BAB Associates. At a time when professional firms frowned on advertising or promotion, BAB helped tell the Ghafari story focusing on its founder, its projects and, perhaps most importantly, its clients. By collaborating with clients rather than the traditional staid Architectural method of attempting to dictate what a client needed, Ghafari’s team of talented young architects and engineers earned repeat business.

We outline plans to leverage media exposure to grow into new market sectors based on solid research and marketing business plan. Ghafari teamed business development under marketing and leveraged the power of marketing and media to new heights. Ghafari people, projects, stories and events appeared almost weekly in newspapers, magazines and television news stories. Excellent work, a visionary leader and great PR helped make Ghafari a household name and one of the largest A/E firms in the state and region among a crowded field of firms with 100 years or more of business experience.