Away from work, Haskell Living the Values Award recipient Susan Payne, far right, is a leader in organizing concert gatherings and tailgates, especially when it involves her favorite musical artist, Kenny Chesney. The tailgates have resulted in a charitable outpouring for needy causes.

November 18, 2024

Living the Values Award Highlights Susan Payne’s Impact at Haskell

Learn how Susan Payne's collaborative spirit and work on innovative tools positioned her to earn the company's Living the Values Award.

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Susan Payne had the best career training possible. She started out as a preschool teacher.

“I did that for five years,” said Payne, a Haskell Quality Control Specialist in the Jacksonville, Florida, headquarters, “and I jokingly tell people that when I became an executive administrative assistant, that experience prepared for me anything I would face in dealing with team members and the executives that I have worked with. That helps you get along with and understand anybody.”

Payne is one of three Q4 recipients of Haskell’s Living the Values Award, which goes quarterly to team members who exemplify the company’s core values of Team, Excellence, Service and Trust. Two of her teammates wrote the letter nominating her for the honor.

“Always available, even during her time off, she proactively checks in on her colleagues, ensuring everything runs smoothly,” Regional Quality Manager Rodger Lawrence and Quality Coordinator Deanna Biddick wrote. “Her organizational skills and attention to detail mean that tasks are completed efficiently and effectively.”

Payne, a Florida native in her seventh year with Haskell, works in Quality software management and helps oversee a recently developed platform called Precogs. Named for the psychic characters who predicted and pre-empted crimes in the 2002 Tom Cruise/Steven Spielberg movie “Minority Report,” Precogs was a winning concept in the 2021 Big Pitch, a Shark Tank-like pitch competition staged by Haskell’s venture capital and innovation arm, Dysruptek.

Working with a software developer, Dysruptek and Haskell produced the system to manage a companywide repository of thousands of lessons learned from projects, then make them not only searchable but instantly accessible when the critical knowledge they contain is relevant.

“This isn’t just software; it is real-life lessons that people can use on their projects to not only make everybody’s lives easier and safer but to hopefully prevent repeated mistakes,” Payne said. “That’s really a cool feeling when you’re able to help with that.”

Payne enjoys her role in supporting groundbreaking technology and was humbled by the Living the Values distinction.

“I’m very thankful for being recognized, but I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes person,” she said. “I was an executive admin for 25 years. I’m not used to being in the spotlight. So, when I found out I was being honored, that was a bit of a shock.”

Away from work, she is a leader in organizing concert gatherings and tailgates, especially when it involves her favorite musical artist, Kenny Chesney. Those concert tailgates have resulted in a charitable outpouring for needy causes, and her groups have helped raise money for animal rescues in the Virgin Islands and victims of the recent hurricanes that affected Florida.

“It is about more than just getting together for music,” she said. “The people that I have met have become like family to me.”

One of her favorite Chesney songs, 2020’s “Here and Now,” puts her outlook on work and personal life in perspective.

“That song made me realize the importance of having work-life balance and to truly enjoy living in the here and now,” she said. “I have learned to make living for today a priority. I encourage people to spend time with their friends and family doing something fun and creating memories that will be with them for years to come. Put fun events into your calendar just like you would any other meeting or appointment.”

Haskell is hiring! Explore the many options available to join a growing company where the Core Values of Team, Excellence, Service and Trust inspire everything we do.

Haskell delivers $2± billion annually in Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC) and Consulting solutions to assure certainty of outcome for complex capital projects worldwide. Haskell is a global, fully integrated, single-source design-build and EPC firm with over 2,400 highly specialized, in-house design, construction and administrative professionals across industrial and commercial markets. With 25+ office locations around the globe, Haskell is a trusted partner for global and emerging clients.

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