Robinson, Stafford & Rude Team Leaders

Don H. Stafford, PE, CVS-Life
President

Don Stafford is a founding partner in Robinson, Stafford & Rude, Inc., currently serving the firm as President and as a Senior Project Manager.

Don’s professional career includes 40 years of experience in the planning, management, design, Value Engineering and construction of public and private capital projects across North America. For 30 years, he has been managing and leading Value Management, Value Analysis and Value Engineering studies, conducting more than 350 value studies. Complementing his Value Engineering experience is more than 15 years of additional experience in planning, management, design and construction of civil works projects. He is a registered civil engineer in seven states and a Life-Certified, Certified Value Specialist. Don's employment experience has included public agencies (owners), designers, value engineers and contractors, providing him with a particularly broad range of perspectives on capital project issues.

Don’s Value Engineering study experience includes: roads and bridges; water and wastewater conveyance; storage and treatment facilities; and drainage facilities; as well as buildings for schools, libraries, health care, vehicle maintenance, and barracks. His diverse project experience also includes more unusual projects such as TV broadcast stations, missile maintenance facilities, medical and laboratory facilities and comprehensive water quality management programs. He has conducted Value Engineering studies on projects and programs with capital costs ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to $1.5 billion.

He is particularly adept at conducting Value Engineering studies on water and wastewater facilities, with extensive experience in this arena as an owner, designer and Value Engineering specialist.

He is also experienced in the application of Value Engineering to the improvement of business systems and procedures. These have included purchasing processes, capital project management systems, revenue enhancement programs, and record management systems. His project experience includes work for clients in the U.S. and Canada.

Mr. Stafford, a member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), is also expert at facilitating workshops of other types, including constructability reviews, alternatives analysis workshops, decision-making workshops, planning workshops, peer reviews, and project initiation workshops.

Finally, he is in demand as an instructor in the Value Analysis and Value Engineering processes. He has taught numerous courses in Value Engineering for both public and private organizations, ranging in duration from one to six days, across North America.

Don has been involved in the Value Engineering professional organization, SAVE International, in many roles, currently serving as the Vice President of Education, a member of the Board of Directors and as a member of the Certification Board. He has authored several papers on both engineering topics and Value Management.

Les Thomas, PE, CVS-Life
Senior VE Team Leader

Les Thomas serves the firm as a Senior VE Team Leader. Les’ professional career includes more than 25 years of experience in leading value engineering studies. His value engineering experience includes transportation facilities such as right-of-ways, multi-purpose trails, bike facilities, roads, highways, interchanges, grade separations, and bridges; water and wastewater supply, treatment, storage and distribution/collection facilities; airfields; firing ranges; tank wash facilities; tank training ranges; vertical construction including medical research facilities, military headquarters, barracks, helicopter hangers and vehicle maintenance facilities. He has conducted value engineering studies on projects and programs with capital costs ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to $2.5 billion.

He has also been "engineer of record" for a wide range of engineering projects including: Wastewater Treatment Facilities; Effluent Disposal and Reuse Systems; Drinking Water Facilities; Correctional Institutions; and Conservation projects, including changing from fossil fuel energy to Geothermal energy.

He is particularly adept at conducting value engineering studies on water and wastewater facilities, with extensive experience in this arena as an owner, designer and value engineering specialist. He also has extensive experience conducting value engineering on transportation projects, and is an expert at facilitating workshops of other types, including constructability reviews, and design charrettes.

Les is a registered civil engineer in two states and a Life-Certified, Certified Value Specialist. He currently serves as a member of the SAVE International Certification Board.

Tabi Deas, AVS
Marketing Director/Project Manager

Tabi Deas serves as marketing director and project manager for Robinson, Stafford & Rude, Inc. (RSRI). As an Assistant VE Team Leader, she has worked on value engineering studies and value analysis workshops across North America and Canada.

Tabi is certified by SAVE International as an Associate Value Specialist (AVS) and has over 7 years experience in land development and new construction projects, including planning, designing, developing and marketing master-planned communities as well as new home design and construction. She also has over 10 years project management experience including serving as an implementation team leader, project manager, and facilitator on a variety of training workshops focusing on administrative processes, call center systems, record-keeping/archive systems and customer service.

Tabi’s value engineering study experience includes water and wastewater conveyance, including tunnels and large pipeline projects; storage and treatment facilities; and stormwater treatment and drainage facilities; as well as value analysis of automation strategies.

Tabi heads up our educational facilities and land development divisions. She is also a licensed real estate professional in the state of Florida and has worked with many land developers and builders in the Tampa Bay area. She has also worked with the Southeast Division of The Home Depot to implement a training program for high-end installed sales to work in conjunction with their centralized call center.

Ms. Deas is an active member in SAVE International and currently serves as secretary of the Central Florida chapter as well as the Director for Administration for the SAVE Continuing Education Initiative.

Randy Thomas, CVS
VE Team Leader

Randy Thomas serves as a CVS VE Team Leader, and Certified Value Trainer. She coordinates the Value Engineering Education programs for the company. As VE team leader, assistant VE team leader and VE team assistant she has worked on value engineering studies across North America. Her experience includes more than 50 VE studies over the last 6 years. She is certified by SAVE International as a Certified Value Specialist (CVS).

Randy’s value engineering study experience includes a large variety of projects: transportation including Rural, Urban, State routes, US and Interstate roads and highways; concrete and steel replacement bridges; intersections and interchanges including SPUIs and round-a-bouts, and railways; building projects for the US Army Corps of Engineers; municipal water, wastewater and sanitary landfills. She is particularly adept at conducting value engineering studies on transportation projects.

Randy has conducted numerous Module 1 and Module II value engineering training seminars including conducting Module II seminars for the SAVE international Annual Conferences. Prior to joining Robinson, Stafford & Rude, Inc., she headed her own business, E-Value Engineering, a value engineering company specializing in value engineering training.

Currently she serves as Vice President of Membership for SAVE International.

Jim Mohart, PE, CVS-Life
Senior Consultant

Jim Mohart serves the firm as a senior consultant. His professional career spans more than 35 years and includes experience in the planning, design and Value Engineering of public and private capital projects throughout the US. For the past 30 years he has been participating in and leading Value Engineering studies. His experience includes more than 250 VE assignments on a wide variety of projects. Complementing his Value Engineering experience is more than 10 years of experience in the design, equipment submittals review, and standards development for civil works projects. He holds a BS in civil engineering and a master’s degree in environmental health. He is a registered civil engineer and a Life-Certified, Certified Value Specialist.

Jim’s Value Engineering experience includes power generation and large civil projects such as pumping stations, intakes and pipelines associated with water supply and water treatment facilities, industrial large civil projects, petrochemical process plants, power generating facilities and transportation projects. He has conducted VE studies for many large and unique projects including nine VE studies for the $550 million Tampa Bay Water, water supply/treatment project, two VE studies of the Panama Canal that developed repair techniques for the largest reconstruction project on the canal in the past 50 years, three studies for a $2.0 billion gas plant that included parallel 48 inch and 54 inch pipelines approximately 120 miles long operating at 960 psi, a study for a 3,000 psi oil field seawater injection plant, and numerous service facilities such as vehicle and equipment maintenance centers.

Jim has used his in-depth VE experience to help pioneer the Value Planning process, and conduct strategic planning meetings and constructability reviews using the VE process. He has combined VE studies with constructibility reviews when projects are in the latter stages of design, or when design is complete. He has conducted introductory classes in Value Engineering for practicing engineers in the public and private sector and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Kansas.

Jim is a member of SAVE, International and has written a number of papers on Value Engineering. He is currently preparing a book on Value Engineering.