Ciholas As A Team

To us, engineering is a social exercise. “We have to listen to our client’s needs and then carefully explain what we have done for them. If we can’t do either of those things, what we do in the middle doesn’t matter,” says president, Mike Ciholas.

Our engineers work together on projects using their field expertise to maximize our chances of creating or improving a product.

“When we have a team working on a project, it’s usually a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, a software engineer, and a project manager. The easy and agile interactions between our engineers help us to solve problems,” Ciholas says.

Our team recognizes that, sometimes, an electrical problem can be solved with a mechanical solution or a software problem can be solved electrically. Often software solutions can solve both problems in mechanical and electrical areas.

“The most interesting situation to me is that when a group gets together they come up with ideas that individually they wouldn’t come up with. But the fact that a person asks a question, stimulates another idea in another person’s mind, and because of this we see the transfer of ideas happening. This sometimes unintentionally and unconsciously creates new solutions and new perspectives,” Ciholas says.

To us, leadership plays an important role in the development of employees. We identify their strengths and individuality while placing them in positions where they are able to thrive.

“I like to think of our environment as collegial,” says director of engineering, Justin Bennett. “When we schedule our employees for a project, we leave some time for miscellaneous so they can work on other projects.”

At Ciholas, we have created a space for our engineers to collaborate. These spaces are called PODS, Project Oriented Design Spaces, where different disciplines of engineering meet to work on projects.

Our goal is to foster communication, collaborate on various problem solving techniques, and most of all for everyone to feel welcomed and appreciated.