12
BUSINESS NEWS THREE DEWBERRY PROJECTS RECOGNIZED WITH ACEC NY ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE AWARDS Dewberry , a privately held professional services firm, has been recognized by ACEC New York as part of the 2021 Engineering Excellence Awards for its site/civil, transportation, and water engineering services on projects in New York City and surrounding areas. The firm received a platinum award in the waste and stormwater category for the Green Infrastructure Project in Jamaica Bay Tributary areas in Queens. Dewberry provided water and wastewater engineering services to manage impervious runoff for phase 1, an area of more than 1,200 acres, for Jamaica Bay Tributaries as part of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s initiative to manage 1.5 percent of the impervious stormwater runoff in priority combined sewer overflow areas. The firm also developed a custom script for geographic information system field data collection to update maps in real time within a mobile georeferencing application.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority Long Island Railroad Murray Hill station improvements project in Queens, New York, was awarded platinum in the transportation category. The firm provided professional design and transportation engineering services for the construction of two passenger elevators, elevator and platform work, and general Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades. Due to the spatial constraints on the platform, which is located below grade in a cut, the firm designed a plan to cut into the existing historic mass gravity walls, construct new retaining wall support, and insert the elevator towers on either side of the east and westbound platforms. All services were completed while the trains were still actively running. The firm also received a gold award in the building/technology systems category for the San Juan Federal Bureau of Investigation office building in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Dewberry provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering and design services
on the $85 million, 155,000 square-foot building. The building, located on the federal complex in Hato Rey, is LEED Gold® certified. The building was designed with a holistic approach using natural resources to maximize energy efficiency and resilience, as the area frequently experiences power outages due to natural disasters. Dewberry is a leading, market-facing firm with a proven history of providing professional services to a wide variety of public- and private-sector clients. Recognized for combining unsurpassed commitment to client service with deep subject matter expertise, Dewberry is dedicated to solving clients’ most complex challenges and transforming their communities. Established in 1956, Dewberry is headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, with more than 50 locations and more than 2,000 professionals nationwide.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 11
for our people to go to work for another organization and not have to move from wherever they live – something that has been a huge barrier to those who would otherwise consider making a job change. Meanwhile, at the same time we have given our employees a whole bunch of new options, we are simultaneously facing record demands for what AEC firms do. Get ready to deal with a whole lot of new turnover. I would be gearing up my recruitment efforts in a major way if you haven’t already done so! You will have to spend money and devote management time to this one too. ❚ ❚ Leadership and ownership transition is really hard but worth it! IF you want your AEC firm to outlast you as the founder(s), you really need to be working on meaningful transition issues now. That means sharing financial information regularly so your people understand the financial dynamics of your business, making sure ALL of your managers have identified a successor, making sure all of those successors are being trained and mentored by their predecessors, developing a financial model that tracks and predicts whether or not your ownership transition program will work, and continuously re-evaluating your transition efforts over time. These things are crucial to everyone in your firm who depends on the company for their employment and retirement, and they must be started on immediately and be done consistently over a long period of time for the organization to survive. And let me add, even if you have zero interest in an internal transition, doing these things is critical to your ability to sell your firm externally! So get on it now! Those are my thoughts for now. I am always interested in hearing YOUR thoughts about these or any other topics of interest to AEC firms, so drop me a line to mzweig@ zweiggroup.com any time! MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
because demand is so high, not because of how their owners are running the business. This worries me because I have seen it before during other boom cycles over the last 40 years. I want to see everyone in this business do well. It is consistent with Zweig Group’s “Elevate the Industry” thrust. But when you see companies out there doing absolutely no marketing, companies with draconian employment policies, companies that share no financial information with their employees, companies that provide no real business or management training to their people, and companies that are doing a whole bunch of other stuff wrong – yet are doing ridiculously well and making record profits – I am certain that some or all of their owners are convinced it is because they are great business managers. But they aren’t. Don’t forget a rising tide lifts all ships. And the moment supply catches up with demand, they will find themselves and their businesses struggling and wonder why. Mark my words this will happen – I have seen it before! So if I were in the AEC business today, I would make darn sure we were running the business properly to set us up for enduring success versus short-term success. “Get ready to deal with a whole lot of new turnover. I would be gearing up my recruitment efforts in a major way if you haven’t already done so!” ❚ ❚ We need to be bracing for a whole lot of employee turnover. Employees of firms in this business have more options than ever, thanks to the changes we all had to make to survive and thrive during the COVID pandemic. We figured out how to work remotely, which is a great thing, and something smart firms did successfully before the pandemic hit. But by doing so, we also opened up a whole lot of doors
© Copyright 2021. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 14, 2021, ISSUE 1396
Made with FlippingBook Annual report