Creating Lasting Partnerships at SBC

Katy Abraham has been attending SAME’s Small Business Conference (SBC) since she became president of Construction Cost Management (CCM) in 2013. The event is not only a way to build her business, but also an avenue to deepen and expand her professional relationships.

At SBC, engineering professionals from across large, medium, and small businesses come together with government agencies, nonprofits, and academia to build trust, make connections, and foster critical relationships for driving projects in the federal A/E/C industry. For CCM, those relationships have translated into meaningful business outcomes.

Connecting With Partners—and Friends

The event attracted Katy as an exhibitor year after year because of the unique value SBC provides to CCM.  

CCM is a woman-owned cost estimating consulting firm based in Fort Worth, Texas, with over 40 years of industry experience. Katy took the reins of the company from her father in 2013, and within five years the company was listed on Fortune magazine’s Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, boasting a growth rate of over 538 percent. That success didn’t happen overnight, though.

“When I bought the company from my father,” Katy recalled, “we had never attended any of the SAME events, and I was just trying to digest all the knowledge I could about the industry. On the internet, I found SAME and the SBC conference. I attended by myself and walked around with no frame of reference. Then I walked it the next year, and the next year we got a booth. And then the next year we had a booth. But as we went on, instead of me going and finding our clients throughout the day, they were coming to find us. It was a real paradigm shift, really. That’s when I knew we had made it.”

“SBC has been such a great place for us to connect with people who share our same values,” Katy said. “CCM has always believed that we only want to work with our ‘friends’—which is a shortened, paraphrased way of talking about the relationships that we build.”

As CCM’s visibility grew, so did its presence on the exhibit floor, where a steady stream of clients and colleagues visited her at CCM’s booth. “It’s almost like they’re stopping by your house to see you!” Katy joked.

For as much as she enjoyed her space on the exhibit floor, this year she chose not be tethered to a booth. Instead, Katy decided that being mobile and making the conference rounds will be a better use of her time. “Walking and seeing people is really my favorite. It’s important to be seen there. It validates you as a business.”

Now, Katy is taking the next step in leveraging the community at SBC. Along with walking the conference floor, Katy will be hosting her first CCM event. “I’m really excited about it. I’m really proud of it, and I think it’s a big step for a small company like us,” she said. “It reinforces the kind of community that I want to be a part of, where we have a space to build collaboration and friendship, and also to be successful.”

“SBC brings together so many of the partners we enjoy working with, as well as new firms and agencies that align with how we like to do business,” she said. “It opens doors to opportunities simply by allowing us to meet great people who value the same approach to teamwork that we do.”

This year’s SBC, in Phoenix, Ariz., November 19-21, 2025, will bring together thousands of engineering professionals from across industry, government, nonprofits, and academia for three days of collaboration and connections. Read more about the event and register on the SBC site.