Meet Chris Poling: EFI Group’s New Senior Project Manager

Chris Poling Senior Project ManagerOur newest Senior Project Manager, Chris Poling, brings over 25 years of experience and a highly unique skill set to EFI Group. He is a cement industry specialist and seasoned project leader committed to ensuring our clients receive the highest levels of safety, efficiency and profitability.

A proven creative problem solver, Chris’ passion is developing solutions based on new thinking and, as a result, he is the holder of six patents for isolating heavy metals from waste streams, as well as the developer of innovative grinding processes. As Chris put it:

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have some weird, funky problem in front of me to figure out. You can solve a lot of things by going to books, but in some cases too much knowledge boxes you into a corner. I certainly rely on the knowledge I’ve gained throughout my career and on the experience of others, but what really drives me is taking industries where they’ve never been before. My core strength has been bringing thinking to the table that you won’t find in a book.”

In fact, Chris made the decision to join EFI Group specifically because of our firm’s problem-solving culture and the opportunities our work provides to innovate solutions to highly challenging manufacturing challenges. In particular, Chris appreciates the value EFI Group places on creativity and the environment we’ve created to support the generation of new ideas and multiple alternative options for our clients.

Chris is also an author and international speaker on topics related to mercury capture and grinding. His long list of awards includes 1st runner-up in the Consulting Engineers Council of Louisiana’s Engineering Excellence Competition, the ICRI Award of Excellence and Outstanding Contributor to the North Point Community Award. Additionally, Chris is OSHA/MSHA certified.

Prior to joining EFI Group, Chris held leadership positions at a number of high-profile companies including SCB International Materials where he served as Vice President of Mercury Capture Systems and Lafarge North America where he was Plant Manager at the Richmond BC and Sparrows Point locations.

Chris is an avid volunteer with his church, a home brewer and classic car enthusiast who loves tinkering with his four-wheeled treasures which include a Triumph TR6, a Mustang Convertible and a Mach 1. Chris and his wife have two children who are talented dancers in ballet, jazz, hip-hop and tap. Their love of dance is likely embedded in their DNA as Chris was known as a drama geek in high school and spent much of his time singing and dancing on stage. While he may have traded in his dance shoes for a calculator in college, he clearly never lost his creative spirit and that has been fueling his success in engineering ever since.

Get to know Chris better by connecting with him on LinkedIn.

We hired EFI Group to help us figure out a project and scope it, and I felt confident they would keep a keen eye on it. They had to deliver quickly and they did it well. They are especially good at project management when you don’t have the resources to do it internally. Reliability is the word I would use to describe EFI Group.
— Coatings Industry Professional
EFI Group is timely. We’ve had a lot of situations when we’ve been in a time crunch and they’ve responded very quickly. They are detail oriented and efficient. They’re a good group of people who also have a lot of strength in pre-engineering — the thought process to get to preliminary design and making sure we’ve investigated all the potential asks of a project to ensure we didn’t miss anything. They have great attention to detail up front which is very important to any project because having that detail-oriented deep dive into the pre-engineering phase sets the stage for the success of the rest of the project, making the process smoother and making it much easier to keep the project on schedule and on budget.
— Mike Quigley, Engineering & Maintenance Manager, Food Industry
I’ve worked with EFI Group for a while, so I know they have a good, knowledgeable staff. We know we’re going to get the results from them we expect. From my interactions with all the different EFI team members I’ve worked with, I know they have knowledge across many industries. Equally, I never have to follow up with EFI Group and, in some cases, they keep me on track.
— Ryan Fredsall, General Manager, Pacer Minerals LLC
We view EFI Group as a team that can dimensionalize our capability to execute projects. We can articulate what it is we want to do and they can take that input and run with it without much intervention from us. They’re able to move a project along independently and only engage us when it’s time to bring us up to speed or get more input to drive a project to conclusion. That’s one of the reasons I view them as an excellent contractor.
— Environmental Engineering Industry Professional
EFI Group has good engineers and good customer service. We know when we get an EFI engineer on a project, we’re going to a get a good job from them and it’s been a productive relationship for both of us — I genuinely like the people.
— Corporate Director, Project Management in Food & Flavors Industry
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