Community Voices Really Speak to Craig Vaughn

The large and complex projects that civil engineers work on have always required collaboration and coordination among engineers. Lately there has been a shift in the civil engineering industry toward more collaboration with the community, that is, the people that are affected by and live with the infrastructure designed by engineers. This shift leads to more listening and more community-engineer collaboration. Talking with Craig Vaughn (BCE 1999), co-founder of Transportation Collaborative & Consultants (TC2), it does not take long to determine that his company is definitely part of this shift. But at TC2, community involvement is not just a trend, it is foundational. They really focus on including community voices.

CEGE met up with Craig Vaughn to talk about TC2's unique approach. Vaughn talked animatedly about the values TC2 is built on and how those values impact their day-to-day interactions with clients, partners, communities, and project outcomes.

Collaboration and living great lives

Living a good life is the crux of what we want to create as an organizational culture. I get goosebumps sometimes thinking of it. This philosophy applies in my own life and how I want to interact with TC2; it applies to how I want my staff to interact with TC2; it applies to how I want all our staff to interact with our agency partners; it applies for sure in how we are going to interact with the community. You can see we put the community first in everything that we do. We lean heavily into that piece.

I hired Matt Pacyna (BCE 2005) as an intern at my previous company in the early 2000s. Over time, he and I started kicking around the idea of having our own firm; we talked about it for several years before we co-founded TC2 in 2021.

We are grounded in transportation. Matt and I both do transportation engineering and planning, and we’ve always considered what we do as a ‘collaborative effort’ while ensuring others can see themselves here too – hence the ‘& Consultants.’ So, TC2 – Transportation Collaborative & Consultants. Thinking about our company name, Matt and I didn’t want to use our names because we thought it isn’t just about us. It sounds a little cliché, but that is truly how we think about things.

At TC2 we approach things from a community-first view. I go in, ask a lot of questions, listen a bunch, and based on the feedback, design elements that will improve people’s lives. Listening is important. People need to see that their ideas are utilized. You can’t use their ideas all the time, but if people can see themselves sometimes, that will encourage more people to share their thoughts and their voices for positive outcomes.

I have always been a collaborator, and I have matured into it, too. When I was in college, I wasn’t thinking about collaboration per se, but as students we did a lot of collaborative group work.

Right out of school, I started working with a mid-sized regional firm where I worked for 23 years. One big part of my experience, and how I came to be where I am today, was the types of mentors I had. They gave me opportunities to have responsibility and take accountability for my work.

I have always been a transportation engineer. The qualitative nature of transportation engineering allows me to think freely and broadly. It isn’t just my opinion versus a piece of data, or a green book that says punch in this calculation and you’ll get the answer. For me, it ended up being, ‘I have this idea, how do we make this happen in the real world?’

I ended up working with communities quite a bit to understand how transportation improvement projects would impact their lives. We would have broad conversations, rather than just talking about data and outcomes.

When I follow the thread, that is how I got here. For me, it is about trying to arrive at the best solution that we all can think of. That requires significant collaboration. It isn’t just about me; it is about how we all think about things.

Put it all on the table

At TC2, we have an open ideation process that, I think, results in more strategic thinking, more collaboration, more unique considerations, and better outcomes.

One thing we try to do differently is to practice less hierarchical decision making and use a more flat, round-the-table-type process where everyone’s voice should be shared and heard. If you have an idea, it should be shared. If we don’t consider it, we might miss something and end up with ideas that are not as creative or as nimble or as strategic.

Since we started TC2, I’ve found it fun to see how other teams work and how we can potentially plug into their process and share our ideas to innovate. Being able to do that with other firms has been enlightening and fun.

They are all interesting projects

I try to find the fun and cool factor in all our projects. I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure to work on some pretty significant projects across my entire career.

Most recently, working on a project with the Rondo community in Saint Paul was a fantastic project for me, personally. I was born and raised in that community. I never thought I would go back as a transportation professional and bring my expertise and my knowledge and help folks there plan their future, too. I would say working on the Rondo Restorative Neighborhood Area Plan has been the most impactful, rewarding project that I have worked on. That particular project; that was fun for me. 

I knew many of the community members, people I grew up with, people who knew my dad. And, as when working with any community anywhere, connections help build trust.

When TC2 comes into a community, we don’t want them to see an engineer or planner as some person trying to implement something contrary to what the community wants. We come to understand what the community wants. Then we take that understanding and try to incorporate that into the design.

On the Rondo Restorative Neighborhood Area Plan, my being from Rondo helped a bit with trust. I let them know that not everything has to be about my world, about transportation or land use planning or economic opportunity, etc. I’d say, "Let’s think about all these things: your life along with the things where I have oversight or an opportunity to help plan or design a solution. How can I share what I know about these things that will help your life, your neighbors’ lives, or your kids’ lives?" Because planners are often working on a 25-year planning horizon, it takes time.

One thing I said throughout the Rondo Restorative Neighborhood Area Plan: "We (the engineers and planners) are the tools in the toolbox, the crayons in the crayon box. You are the ones who set the vision. You are telling us what you want your future to be."

At TC2 we try to bring that understanding forward on all our projects. We practitioners have certain knowledge around civil engineering, water resources, land use planning, landscape architecture. We take community input and put it through our practitioners’ lens and then show them what that could look like. And they might say, that’s not what I said or that is what I said, but that is not what I meant. So, we do it again. And if you do that a couple times you get outcomes that community members can see themselves in and appreciate. If you do that, you get outcomes that make all our lives better.