Executive Interview with UECU: How The PMO Squad Provides Value

“Trusting the PMO Squad to manage our most ambitious and impactful project in 10 years was not easy, but they were key to producing success.”  

Jason Prentice, Spectrum Technologies 

Thanks Jason, we appreciate those kind words! 

Testimonials are great, and we are grateful to our clients for sharing them with us.  We proudly have many of them sprinkled throughout The PMO Squad’s website.  While the testimonials are great and appreciated, they only tell part of the story. Behind every testimonial are decisions that were made, funds that were invested, time that was allocated, and maybe even a sleepless night or two along the way.  

This month we get to look behind the testimonial and talk to Bret Krevolin, President and CEO of Utilities Employees Credit Union (UECU). You’ll get a glimpse into the PMO challenges UECU faced, how The PMO Squad addressed those challenges, the results they’ve seen, and more. 

We hope you enjoy the interview! 

Can you tell us who you are and a bit of your background? 
My name is Bret Krevolin and I’m the President and CEO of Utilities Employees Credit Union (UECU) in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.  

My career has primarily been in the financial industry. I started with CoreStates Financial (now Wells Fargo) in financial reporting. I left and was with Coopers & Lybrand as an audit supervisor, with a concentration in the financial industry. I then moved to one of my clients, Quakertown National Bank (now QNB Bank), and spent 25 years there as the CFO. Most recently, I took on the role of CFO at Utilities Employees Credit Union in 2014 and became the CEO in 2018. 

I have my undergraduate degree in accounting from Syracuse University, an MBA in Finance from Temple University, and I am a CPA. 

What services does UECU provide its members and what makes UECU so unique? 

We are a full-service credit union that offers loan and deposit products to our nationwide membership. While we focus primarily on companies and employees in the utility industry, we also serve family members as well as any resident of Pennsylvania who joins the Pennsylvania Consumer Credit Association (PACC).  

We are unique in that we service our nationwide membership base primarily through our modern online and mobile banking platform, and our exceptional Member Service Call Center. We are branchless, other than the one we have in our headquarters.  

How large is UECU?  
We have $1.4 billion in assets with almost 50,000 members serviced by 96 employees. In terms of the number of employees, we are very small relative to our asset size. 

What problems were you experiencing that made you feel like you needed to call a company like The PMO Squad? 

We did not have a formal project management process in place, and the informal process was led primarily by the application developers and one project manager. There was a lot of frustration between the developers and the business units, and projects were not being completed timely or efficiently. 

By the way, how did you hear about The PMO Squad? 
Scott Neave, VP of IT and Operations, researched online and also spoke to a friend from the Project Management Institute who referred The PMO Squad. 

What services did The PMO Squad provide to help address those problems? 
We mainly leveraged their PMO Build services and Direct Placement of PMO resources. Nicole from the PMO Squad helped us put a formal process in place and agreed with my recommendation to move the PMO team out from the IT area so that it was independent of both IT and the business units. The PMO Squad was also instrumental in helping us recruit our PMO Manager and Business Analyst.

What did it look like day-to-day working with The PMO Squad?  
I enjoyed that they interviewed so many employees to get their opinion on what the pain points were in our existing process. Meetings with the executive team were weekly in the beginning and were very efficient and productive thanks to Nicole’s organization and contributions. They were very flexible with our schedule while we were implementing our new online and mobile banking platform. 

Was there anything The PMO Squad did that surprised you? 
Their ability to recruit two excellent employees, PMO Manager and Business Analyst.

How has your newly formed PMO contributed towards your strategic goals? 
While we are still working some kinks out of the process, we have definitely seen significant improvement. Projects are being analyzed early, prioritized, and assigned the proper resources.  Our PMO Manager is excellent in keeping things moving along and asking the right questions. 

What do you think the future of the PMO is in your organization? 
The PMO will be a major contributor to our success. We have a significant number of projects, some big, some small, that we want to accomplish over the next couple of years.  

Any advice you would give to credit union leaders and executives looking to establish or improve their PMOs? 
Engage with the PMO Squad! 

And thank you Bret! Especially for the advice you would provide to other leaders and executives looking to establish or improve their PMOs. We thoroughly enjoyed our engagement with UECU and look forward to helping your PMO continue to improve in the future. 

We hope this interview gives everyone a glimpse into what it’s like working with The PMO Squad and an idea of the results we generate. Not sure if we’re the right fit? Schedule a complimentary strategy session with one of our consultants. Perhaps the next article will be about you and your experience working with the Squad.