TZL 1386 (web)

BUSINESS NEWS WARE MALCOMB ANNOUNCES COMPLETION OF MEDLINE INDUSTRIES INC. CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTER Ware Malcomb , an award- winning international design firm, announced construction is complete on the Medline Industries Inc. Call Center. Ware Malcomb provided architecture and interior design services for the project. Medline Industries Inc.’s new call center located in Dubuque, Iowa is 130,000 square feet and LEED Certified. With a design goal of creating a “town within a town,” the impressive size of the call center offers more than 1,000 workstations. To help designate the space, the design team implemented neighborhoods and active, interwoven landscaping using materials and fixtures such as acoustical clouds and colored lighting to serve as beacons for each area. Break out spaces were implemented throughout to serve as individual oases for those needing to unwind away from their desks. Adjacent to the cafeteria is a light-filled corner city center with access to an outside patio, providing employees an opportunity to connect with nature and unwind. To enhance staff members’ well-being, a 5,200 square

foot gym/multipurpose room with a full-size basketball court is available to all employees. The gym also boasts a 2,200 state-of-the- art fitness center. To encourage activity, the space includes a quarter mile track around the interior of the open office. “Medline’s unparalleled growth created a need for a new customer service center, which supports and responds to all of Medline’s Core Business Units,” said Cameron Trefry, principal of Ware Malcomb’s Chicago, Oak Brook and Washington D.C. offices. “With such an expansive space, it was our top priority that the entire facility emphasizes connectivity and community,” said Dawn Riegel, Director, Interior Architecture and Design of Ware Malcomb’s Chicago and Oak Brook offices. Medline Industries has become one of the county’s largest employers according to the Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, with the Dubuque Call Center adding over 100 new jobs. Medline is the largest privately held manufacturer and distributor of healthcare supplies in the United States. In addition to providing architecture and interior design services for more than 30 projects across

the country, the Ware Malcomb and Medline teams collaborated to develop a national prototype for their distribution facilities. The general contractor for the project was Alston Construction. Established in 1972, Ware Malcomb is a contemporary and expanding full service design firm providing professional architecture, planning, interior design, civil engineering, branding and building measurement services to corporate, commercial/residential developer and public/institutional clients throughout the world. With office locations throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, Ware Malcomb specializes in the design of commercial office, corporate, industrial, science and technology, healthcare, retail, auto, public/institutional facilities and renovation projects. Ware Malcomb is recognized as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company and a Hot Firm by Zweig Group. The firm is also ranked among the top 15 architecture/engineering firms in Engineering News-Record’s Top 500 Design Firms and the top 25 interior design firms in Interior Design magazine’s Top 100 Giants.

MARK ZWEIG, from page 9

finely tuned because it is going to be even more necessary than ever. I think most firms in this business did a pretty good job here over the last year, but if not, now is not the time for foot-dragging on this important initiative, at all! 5) Get your credit facilities ready for unprecedented use, because your coming growth is going to require more working capital availability. That means you should get the largest line of credit you can before you need it. Growth sucks up cash. You have to hire people, outfit them, pay them, and then bill your clients for their services. That can take multiple months. This means you will need more credit available to float all that. Get it now while your business doesn’t need so much of it! 6) Take a hard look at your future facilities needs and be ready to expand your space. Sure, we will undoubtedly still have a lot of people working remotely after COVID-19 is long-gone. But we will also be having meetings and other gatherings for your people that will require space. And those who do come in the office aren’t going to want to be packed in like sardines and will want more space and more privacy. 7) Model your pending ownership transition to see if you are going to be able to afford the stock buybacks coming your way as turnover increases and retirements go up. This is so critical, and it is so rarely done in A/E firms it’s almost shocking. Ownership transition is going to be a bigger problem than ever compounded by firm values that will be growing off the charts. So, what do you think? Are we headed for a boom? Will you be ready to “catch a wave and be sitting on top of the world,” as the old Beach Boys song went? MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

because if you have anyone who’s good at what they do they will be aggressively getting recruited by other firms in this business. What is your stated mission and vision? Do people get excited about your purpose? If not, they need to be or you will lose the best of them. Also – pay IS critical. How do you stack up compared to the firms that will want to hire your people. It is important. So are benefits, work hours, open- book management, well thought-out incentive plans, quality leadership, and much, much more. Don’t allow yourself to put off the changes you need to make to make your firm a better place to work. You have to get on it immediately. “We are likely to have a huge, more than $3 trillion infrastructure bill get through Congress in the near term. That, along with pent-up demand in so many vertical- construction categories is going to be throwing gasoline on a fire that is already burning.” 3) Staff up your marketing department to get ready for the onslaught of RFPs needing proposal and qualification document responses. Yes, I know marketing for an A/E business requires a lot more than responding to RFPs and RFQs. But those things DO take a lot of time to do properly and you already have a lot of them. Imagine if the volume went up by a factor of two or three! Better be ready for that because it very well could. 4) Get your systems and processes for performing remote work

THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 5, 2021, ISSUE 1386

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