Getting Down & Dirty - President and CEO of TMC Services, Matt Clark

When college students think about careers, they don't often think of tackling the dirtiest, grimiest, most dangerous jobs. But that is exactly what Matt Clark was planning when he earned a chemistry degree from Bridgewater State in 1992.

"I never knew anything else growing up," says the president and CEO of TMC Services, one of New England's leading full-service environmental contracting companies. "I have been working in this industry since I was 12, doing everything from installing and removing fuel tanks, to providing project estimates and managing projects," Clark explains, noting that his father employed him in the family business of environmental site work connected with development.

When a severe economic downturn crippled development work and shuttered the doors on the family business (about the time he graduated) Clark and his brother, Tom, concocted the idea of building a broader business - one that would offer specialized services to clients facing a wide array of environmental challenges, not just associated with development, but with catastrophic emergency response and regulatory enforcement actions as well.

"We had no money, and when we went to get a loan, every bank told us we needed three years of financial statements and referred us to another lender," Clark recalls. "So we ran up about $100,000 in credit card debt and just started bidding on projects," he says laughing.

Fortunately, the Clark brothers landed a big assignment cleaning up fuel and water separator systems at the decommissioned railway engine terminal in Somerville. They successfully cleaned up the site, removing and disposing of hazardous wastes while earning enough profit to sustain them while the region's economy started lifting.

Then TMC Services caught the wave of work associated with remediation and upgrades of leaking underground storage tanks mandated by the EPA. "The deadline for that work was 1998, and there was a lot of it," Clark recalls.

That momentum propelled them to where they are today, as a recognized leader providing critical, diversified environmental services that include:

• Mold and microbial remediation;
• Asbestos and lead abatement;
• Soil stabilization and site restoration;
• Oil and chemical spill containment and response; and
• Transport and disposal of hazardous materials.

The company now has a lot full of specialized equipment, 75 full-time employees, and the ability to assemble temporary SWAT teams for special projects. "We have the assets, diversity of talent and the flexible structure necessary to respond quickly to any situation," Clark says, noting that "we work for all kinds of clients, from local homeowners to the federal government."

He states that his teams have provided critical response to factory and transportation spills, leaking residential oil tanks, and even radiation leaks. "We are one of two companies approved by the [Department of Environmental Protection] to do emergency response work in all four districts of the state," he asserts. TMC has also removed pigeon guano (which has caustic, infectious and toxic properties) from bridges and church steeples. "We are even trained to do work involving weapons of mass destruction, such as radioactive materials, anthrax or deadly microbes," he adds.

"People know that our technical abilities separate us from many other people who try to do environmental work. We are not Joe's backhoe service, and we are trained to remove substances like asbestos safely so that it does not contaminate your clothes, your car, your workplace or your home for months or even years after the work is done," Clark says.

While TMC Services is extremely successful today, Clark says that he and his brother have learned some hard lessons about how to grow a business successfully. "We made some mistakes that cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars," he reflects, noting that "people issues" and "culture issues" are particularly important. "The biggest lesson I learned is that you must work on your business and not in your business as an executive," says Clark. "Sometimes I invested too much in the wrong person, and sometimes there were integrity issues I was too busy to see," he admits.

Now Clark recognizes that managing and leading is a full-time job. "Now I spend a lot of time looking for the best people. I surround myself with people who are smarter than I am at marketing, human resources or other functions," he explains. "I also spend a lot of time developing and protecting both client relationships and employee relationships with the company," he adds, noting that good employees, like good clients, always have other opportunities. So he offers clients on-line "customer feedback surveys" and he regularly "takes the cultural temperature of the company" with employees.

Clark says that cultural issues are extremely important, asserting that "if you don't establish a culture in your company, then it will establish itself." He believes that the cultural tone is set most clearly by the type of person a company hires.

"Our guiding principles must be reinforced by the kinds of people we hire, so we look for a person with: ethics and integrity; smarts; accountability; and a sense of balance between the importance of teamwork and individual responsibility," Clark says. He adds that it is important to give back to the community, so TMC looks for a sense of community responsibility as well. "I decided we were not doing enough in that area, so I recently hired a person to work full-time on that," Clark acknowledges.

He also says that his key contact at Burns & Levinson, managing partner David Rosenblatt, has the same attributes that TMC Services seeks in their employees. "David just fits with us. He has ethics and integrity, he provides great counsel and is totally reliable and accountable," Clark says, adding that Burns & Levinson has become his "go to" firm for legal assistance on matters involving transactional work, business development work, human resources, and other issues.

"I clicked with David right away," says Clark, recalling that they met when TMC was pitching its service capabilities to Burns & Levinson because of the law firm's role as valued counselors to other businesses. "We gave them a try after another firm had mishandled a transaction for us, leaving a huge mess to clean up. David and his partners are superb, and we have never regretted taking a chance on them. They provide great value and great service," Clark concludes.

This interview was published in the Spring 2009 issue
of our newsletter, Focus
Click here to view the entire 2009 Spring Focus