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BUSINESS NEWS COWI STRENGTHENS STRUCTURE IN NORTH AMERICA Three well- known specialized bridge, tun- nel, and marine engineering consultants have combined to drive the growth of COWI in North America. COWI-owned companies Buckland & Tay- lor and Jenny Engineering Corporation joined with sis- ter company COWI Marine North America to become COWI North America . As a merged company, 350 employees across 13 U.S. and Canadian offices will continue to provide the highest level of technical excellence in bridge, tunnel, and marine engineer- ing as COWI North America to push the boundaries on the most complex and prestigious engineering projects world- wide. It is a calculated move to take advantage of the infrastructure demands of the next 10 years, as well as the COWI name in the international market. “Our decision to merge and rebrand at this time was de- liberate,” said COWI North America President and CEO Steven Hunt. “We see strong growth in the demand for our specialist services combined with our clients looking for

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new ways to deliver their proj- ects. Our clients entrust us to combine our very specialized engineering expertise with project leadership to handle ever larger and more complex projects for them. We see this as an optimal time to combine our North American specialist businesses and lever the glob- al scale of COWI in the bridge, tunnel, and marine market.” COWI’s presence in North America dates back to 1988 with the purchase of marine engineering firm Ben. C. Ger- wick. COWI later acquired Buckland & Taylor in 1998, Ocean and Coastal Consul- tants in 2007 and Jenny En- gineering Corporation in 2012. ICA FLUOR TO BUILD $1 BIL- LION REFINING FACILITY IN MEXICO Fluor Corporation announced that ICA Fluor was authorized by Pemex Transformación Industrial to proceed with the engineering, procurement, and construc- tion of the Madero Clean Die- sel project at the Madero Re- finery in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Fluor booked its $500 million share of the contract in the fourth quarter of 2015. ICA Fluor will provide detailed engineering, procurement,

construction, commissioning, and start-up services for two 25,000-barrel-per-day diesel hydrodesulfurization trains and associated facilities. The project also includes installa- tion of new hydrogen, sulfur recovery, and sour water treat- ment plants, the revamp of the existing diesel hydrodesulfur- ization unit, and offsites and utilities to integrate the new production facility with the ex- isting refinery. The project is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2018. The project is part of Pemex’s clean fuels program, its com- prehensive development and modernization program, and is designed to increase Mexico’s production of ultra-low sulfur diesel in accordance with ap- plicable environmental stan- dards. “We are very pleased with the performance of ICA Fluor, and this award by Pemex dem- onstrates the trust and con- fidence in our joint venture to successfully execute this very significant clean fuels project at the Madero refinery,” said Peter Oosterveer, Fluor’s chief operating officer. “Fluor and ICA Fluor remain fully commit- ted to Pemex and our other clients in the Mexican market.”

1200 North College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703 Mark Zweig | Publisher mzweig@zweiggroup.com Richard Massey | Managing Editor rmassey@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor christinaz@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Editor sparkman@zweiggroup.com Megan Halbert | Design Assistant mhalbert@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com Tel: 800-466-6275 Fax: 800-842-1560 Email: info@zweiggroup.com Online: www.thezweigletter.com Twitter: twitter.com/zweigletter Blog: blog.zweiggroup.com

MARK ZWEIG, from page 1

time, and when the client brings you, the principal, into the situation, it’s probably already too late. No amount of promises or salesmanship is going to resurrect it. So the best insurance is this – TALK . Tell your PMs to call their client every day just to talk. Ask a question. Talk about kids. Discuss the details of the project. LOOK for a reason to call. Start a program of calling daily and I guarantee you that your performance, team morale, and client relationships will all improve immensely. Ignore my advice at your peril. Keep going down that path of letting your people email everything to your clients in the name of convenience and liability reduction. Allow your people to opt out of making a 10-minute phone call every three weeks and I guarantee you that you will lose precious clients you shouldn’t be losing. Being willing to call and get off the email is something us old people tend to do better than the younger ones. You’d think since everyone has a cell phone they would use it to talk, but nope, it is for Facebooking and texting and listening to Pandora and responding to work emails. But talk? Why would you do that? Try it out. Have your PMs call their clients every day for two weeks. Tell me what happens. My guess is you’ll have smoother projects and find some new ones, to boot. But two weeks really isn’t enough. Six months of doing this would be a much better trial. MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s founder and CEO. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

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THE ZWEIG LETTER February 8, 2016, ISSUE 1138

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