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TRANSACTIONS CUMMING GROUP ACQUIRES DUBLIN- BASED LAFFERTY, STRENGTHENING THE TEAM’S PROJECT MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE ACROSS IRELAND Cumming Group, an international project management and cost consultancy, announced that Lafferty, a leading Irish project management company with offices in Dublin, Cork, and Galway, has joined the organization’s growing team. This strategic acquisition strengthens Cumming Group’s position in Ireland’s construction market, particularly in the life sciences, multi-family residential, mixed-use, and commercial sectors. Established in 1997, Lafferty has built a reputation as a trusted advisory firm guiding major developers and multi- national institutional investors in Ireland. Combined with the former Scollard Doyle team that joined Cumming Group in July 2021, the merger creates one of the country’s largest pure-play owner’s representative firms supported by more than 90 local team members and circa 700 across Europe. The integration of

Lafferty creates a market-leading full- service project and cost management business, significantly enhancing the company’s project management capabilities throughout the region and complementing its established quantity surveying business. ‌John Rattigan, managing director at Lafferty, commented, “By combining our operations, we are creating a best- in-class integrated service offering that aligns Lafferty’s expertise in managing large-scale and complex projects with Cumming Group’s industry-wide capability in providing a complete client- side end-to-end service. This partnership will provide us with access to Cumming Group’s international resources and expertise, enabling us to better serve our clients while creating new opportunities for our team.” Craig Maunder, CEO U.K. & Europe of Cumming Group, said, “The addition of Lafferty to Cumming Group represents a significant milestone in our strategic growth within Ireland. This partnership not

only reinforces our existing cost-focused offering in the region but also brings specialised expertise in key sectors and complements our continued growth in target markets, including life sciences, infrastructure, hospitality and residential, and data centres. By doubling our size, we are also able to further penetrate these markets throughout the region.” “I’m particularly excited to combine Lafferty’s local presence and service expertise with our capabilities,” added Barry Doyle, Managing Director, Ireland, Cumming Group. “This merger leaves us uniquely positioned to deliver exceptional value to clients across Ireland and beyond.” Cumming is an industry-leading, multi- faceted project management and cost consulting firm. Lafferty is an independent project delivery consultancy, set up to achieve highly effective process and construction delivery, focused on key stakeholder objectives and optimal investment return.

our team is in a beta testing phase on a new internal sustainable design excellence framework tool. Two of our team members presented their findings of this analysis to a project team, and it was a beautiful thing to witness. This is something we’ve aspired to have for so long and my team members are killing it. It gives us motivation and hope for the future of these efforts and provides case studies demonstrating success for our leadership, project leads, and clients. 5. Bring passion, because you’ll need it. I’ll be very honest that this business model is still in an early phase, and it takes patience to see things through! I won’t deny that plenty of challenges are ahead as we try to continue to find ways to measure our success and drive progress forward. If you don’t believe in this work at a bigger picture and larger scale, you’re not going to last as a changemaker. But I can tell you, it has been worth it for me and for our team, and we are excited to see just how impactful we can be. I’ve learned a lot since we launched this business line in 2022, and I hope these lessons I’ve learned in that time are helpful for any other architecture or engineering professionals who are interested in promoting sustainability-focused operations and design solutions at their company. Ashleigh Powell is an associate, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, and director of sustainability at Cushing Terrell. Her academic emphasis was energy-efficient building design, construction and operations. She is based in Austin, Texas. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

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inventive and creative to transform our practices into a long-term carbon-neutral approach centered on holistic sustainability. At my multidisciplinary firm, our Green Advocacy Council essentially became a community of practice, and we accomplished tremendous things in that space. But at a certain point, it felt like we needed to formalize it to be more directly responsive to industry demands and client needs. We considered several models, including working groups and studios. After investigation and research, we landed on forming a sustainability “service sector.” This enables us to operate as a firm-wide internal consulting group with the capabilities to do direct consulting for clients who are strictly seeking sustainable design services. 3. Get comfortable talking business and finance. As director of sustainability, I’m still learning about the business side of AEC as we’ve sought to promote this work and embed it into our design process. My advice is to invite some skeptics onto your team so they can bring up questions you might not have thought of. Get with the CFO of your company. Find out what information you’ll need to collect and analyze. Learn how to be responsive to questions at a business level. Most likely, you’re not only going to need to show how sustainability fits in with your company’s mission, vision, and values, but also show ROI and how it makes business sense. 4. Progress can be slow – but it’s so powerful to see the work in action. We’ve just recently celebrated our first full year operating our sustainability service sector. Currently,

THE ZWEIG LETTER FEBRUARY 3, 2025, ISSUE 1571

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