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BUSINESS NEWS CONSUMERS CREDIT UNION’S NEW HOK- DESIGNED HEADQUARTERS EMANATES FROM NATURE Consumers Credit Union, one of Michigan’s largest homegrown financial institutions, opened its new HOK -designed Kalamazoo headquarters this week. Nearly 150 employees previously working in four separate buildings moved into a 22-acre collaboration center situated among rolling hills and wooded ravines. The centerpiece: a contemporary, three-story office evoking its natural surroundings, designed to bring employees closer together while providing unmatched amenities. “Our new home underscores Consumers’ strong commitment to West Michigan, including its communities and its local economy,” said Kit Snyder, president and CEO of Consumers. “This new space gives our entire team a place to call home, and a prime location to recruit and train new employees as we continue to grow.” “Our design for the new headquarters captures and manifests the core values and sense of identity of Consumers Credit Union,” said Peter Ruggiero, AIA, design principal for HOK’s Chicago practice. “Designed to promote communication, the open, collaborative workplace recognizes its unique surroundings through its placement on the site and the access to daylight and views afforded by the thoughtfully-designed plan.”
Consumers and HOK collaborated to design the 92,000-square-foot branded environment that expresses the company’s values while fostering collaboration. The building accomplishes these goals through several design strategies: ❚ ❚ Open workspaces, collaboration, and training: The open floor plan includes modern workstations, informal gathering spaces and a learning lab featuring the latest technology for staff training. ❚ ❚ Central gathering space: Employees and visitors enter through a central glass atrium with a grand staircase, connecting all areas of the building. ❚ ❚ Wellness and amenities: Staff can take advantage of an on-site café, coffee bar, fitness center, fitness and running trail, and expansive outdoor patio overlooking nature. ❚ ❚ Connection to nature: The building’s form is influenced by its surroundings, from expansive glass walls providing forest views to the intentional use of tree cover along roads leading to the workplace. To accommodate Consumers’ future growth, HOK designed the building to be built in three phases. It can be expanded up to 200,000-square-feet based if needed. HOK is a global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm. Through a network of 23 offices worldwide, HOK
provides design excellence and innovation to create places that enrich people’s lives and help clients succeed. FLUOR AWARDED CONTRACT FOR SHELL PENGUINS OFFSHORE UK PROJECT IN NORTH SEA Fluor Corporation announced that the company was awarded a contract by Shell for the engineering, procurement, and fabrication of Shell’s Penguins floating production storage and offloading vessel in the North Sea. “We are pleased to partner with Shell in the U.K. as they make this significant investment in their North Sea operations,” said Jim Brittain, president of Fluor’s energy and chemicals business. “We leveraged Fluor’s full range of integrated solutions to drive down the project’s costs and our fabrication capabilities were a clear differentiator. This award demonstrates Fluor’s ability to design, fabricate and deliver high-quality, capital-efficient offshore facilities globally.” Fluor has full responsibility for the design, fabrication, and delivery of the pre- commissioned FPSO to the North Sea. The FPSO will have a production capacity of 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and can store up to 400,000 barrels. The FPSO will be designed to operate continuously for 20 years without dry docking and will help extend the life of the Penguins oil and gas fields.
❚ ❚ Revenue factor. This is a great way to measure a firm’s per- formance over time, because of its simplicity. How much did the firm make – minus subconsultant expenses – divided by the firm’s total labor costs. ❚ ❚ Average collection period. How quickly is your firm getting paid for the work performed? When you allow your clients to be delinquent in paying for your services, you have effectively become their bank, allowing them to finance their project, literally, at your expense. An ACP under 60 days is a good target. There are probably some things we don’t need to know, such as “What’s in this hot dog?” or what happens after someone says, “Hold my beer” or “Watch this!” But when it comes to our projects, we need to know as much as we can to ensure we stay on track for our firm and our clients. Just don’t be too quick to say, “I don’t need to know that.” BILL MURPHEY is Zweig Group’s director of education. Contact him at bmurphey@zweiggroup.com. “When it comes to our projects, we need to know as much as we can to ensure we stay on track for our firm and our clients. Just don’t be too quick to say, ‘I don’t need to know that.’”
BILL MURPHEY, from page 9
on this project? Too much time? If we spent more time than planned, what caused the deviation? How much time is left, if we are to stay on budget? ❚ ❚ Resources. Do we have the right people, subconsultants, enough time, or other resources available to complete the projects? If not, how do we acquire the necessary resources? What resources will we need to complete the next phase or the one after that? ❚ ❚ Billing. Have we sent an invoice to our clients for the work we have already performed? When did we send the invoice? Did they receive the invoice? ❚ ❚ Collection. Has the client paid for the services we provided? If not, when will they pay for those services? Who’s respon- sible for collecting payment? Additionally, many firms track specific numbers and multipliers that highlight trends in their financial health. Here are a few of the typical metrics we see: ❚ ❚ Chargeability or utilization rates. This is the amount of labor directly charged to projects versus the total number of hours worked. Most firms track this and have targets they seek to achieve, but this is probably one of the weakest met- rics because time can be manipulated which can lead to over- spending on a project. ❚ ❚ Net multiplier. This is the amount of net service revenue earned per direct labor charged. It can indicate a firm’s project efficiency.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER March 5, 2018, ISSUE 1238
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