“I like the challenges that come with the role and overcoming problems,” says Jesse Congleton, Director of Irrigation Services, “every day is different.” Jesse has worked for Prestonwood for more than a decade and oversees all aspects of the company’s irrigation services, from proposals and client management to construction, repairs, and upgrades, including the department’s managers and field employees.
Jesse thrives on challenges like keeping an irrigation system intact and functioning properly while a site undergoes deconstruction. Or finding the cause of water infiltration into buildings, repairing it, and preventing it from happening in the future, though that’s changing. “Technology is starting to change the business for the better,” he said about his favorite project in recent memory, updating a standard irrigation system with smart controllers. “We can make dynamic changes to a system daily, while off-site instead during monthly inspections. We can tell if there’s an issue in the system immediately through smart controller monitoring.” Monitoring and servicing irrigation systems that save clients’ money and the environment water.
Working all across the industry, commercial to residential, two-person operations to the largest in the country, Jesse believes it’s the concern for clients and the pro-active attitude of their team that’s the difference-maker. Client problems are our problems, and that’s not lip service. “When I made a mistake on a client’s system settings, and they didn’t get the water savings I promised, I made it right and paid their water bill. Other companies would have let that client walk away and lost the business. We’re more concerned with our client’s problems and resolving them.”
That’s part of what makes Prestonwood a great employer in Jesse’s eyes. They are willing to give motivated employees the freedom and empowerment to do what needs to be done for the client. “Our attitude for management and operations is, ‘if it ain’t right, fix it.’” For Jesse, Prestonwood provided him the opportunity to research and design the proprietary software and database system Prestonwood now uses to run a large part of its business.
For those interested in joining the Prestonwood team, Jesse had this to say, “I’ve worked here 11 years, so I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. The ones that stick and last are go-getters, they’re proactive.”
They take ownership: they don’t sit by waiting for the work to come. They’re out there looking for it. Our successful employees are always looking for new ways to tackle old problems, find issues, and resolve them before the client even notices a potential problem, so they’re always taken care of.
