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ON THE MOVE WARE MALCOMB ANNOUNCES NEW LAND SURVEYING MANAGER Ware Malcomb , an award-winning international design firm, today announced Justin Scheitler has joined the firm as land surveying manager in the Denver Civil Engineering office. In this position, Scheitler leads and manages Ware Malcomb’s Land Surveying Group for clients across Colorado. Ware Malcomb has provided surveying services for clients in the past, and the strategic hire of Scheitler will provide a comprehensive and consistent approach and grow the firm’s land surveying services. Services provided by Ware Malcomb’s Land Surveying Group include ALTA surveys, subdivision platting, design surveys, and topographic surveys, among others. The firm’s land surveying projects range in size from a few acres to thousands of acres. The seamless integration between Ware Malcomb’s land surveying services and the in-house civil
engineering and architecture teams provides cost-savings and efficiency benefits to clients. “We are thrilled to have Justin join our Ware Malcomb team to lead the land surveying group,” said Tom Jansen, principal of Ware Malcomb’s Civil Engineering Group. “He has already hit the ground running to provide extraordinary value and input to our work, and we look forward to his continued contributions in the years ahead.” “We are excited to strengthen our land surveying services as part of an integrated approach that increases the accuracy, quality, and efficiency of every project,” added Jansen. “Our team members utilize the latest in surveying technology to provide increased productivity and timely results for our clients.” Scheitler is a professional land surveyor, licensed in Colorado, with more than 14 years
of experience in the profession. His previous surveying experience includes commercial, residential, railroad, drainage, and bathymetric surveys and construction surveys. He holds an Associate of Applied Science in Land Surveying from the Denver Institute of Technology/ Westwood College. He is a member of the National Society of Professional Surveyors. Established in 1972, Ware Malcomb is an international design firm providing planning, architecture, interior design, branding, civil engineering, and building measurement services to commercial real estate and corporate clients. With office locations throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Panama, the firm specializes in the design of commercial office, corporate, industrial, science and technology, healthcare, retail, auto, public/educational facilities and renovation projects. Ware Malcomb is recognized as a Hot Firm and Best Firm to Work For by Zweig Group.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 3
AEC firms as well. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. A lot of bad apples can spoil the whole bunch even faster. The culture is defined by what types of behaviors are rewarded and what behaviors are punished. It is top management’s role to make sure that culture is healthy. If it is, average people will rise to become greater people. And that is essential to the business for so many different reasons. 7)Boards of directors don’t know what their roles are supposed to be. AEC firms do a horrible job here. The reason is that all too often, the individual directors on the BOD are also the owners and managers and employees of the business. Which hat they are wearing at what time is often confused. The decisions of day-to-day management are frequently taken up at the BOD level, and BOD-level decisions are not made at all or are made in a much smaller group than the entire BOD as they should be. This lack of functionality as a BOD can be improved by adding outside directors who have experience on other BODs. 8)Firms can (and should) work to build a brand for themselves. Having a solid brand that is recognized by all clients in the market a firm seeks to serve carries so many benefits. Those include the ability to charge higher prices, a better hit rate in proposals selected, and more incoming leads in the first place. But they don’t come quickly or for free – and they especially don’t come to firms with owners who do not believe building a brand as an AEC firm is even possible. It is in fact possible and necessary to maximize success in all areas. HOK Sport, CH2M, EYP Mission Critical, T.Y. Lin International, Gensler, Miyamoto International, and many more firms established themselves as undisputed leaders in their markets over the last 20-30 years. They have (or had) tremendous brands that make (or made) their firms more valuable than those that didn’t have the brands they had. Do you have other undeniable truths about this business you’d like to add to this list? If so, drop me a line at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
systems, training, and day-to-day management. Of course, this may mean more marketing dollars have to be spent to find different clients from those the firm currently has. And contracting authority limits as well as review procedures have to be in place to ensure individual managers and BD people aren’t giving the work away. 4)Most firms wait too long to start ownership and leadership transition. All you have to do is look at the data Zweig Group has collected for years to agree that this is a problem. The data shows that most people have to wait until they are 40 or older to become owners in their firms, and most owners wait until they are 65 or older to start selling their ownership interests. The result is there is not enough time to effect a transition. Add to that little or no effort of individual firm principals to identify and train their successors and it’s no wonder most companies don’t survive their first generation. Transition has to start sooner and owners need more time to adequately train their successors before they assume their roles. 5)Accountability won’t happen without widespread information sharing. This may seem obvious but the attitude of the majority of AEC firm owners is that they don’t need to share performance metrics beyond anyone they are measuring and themselves. As a result, peer pressure to perform is non-existent. Managers are told it is their job to enforce standards and insist on goal achievement, yet have no standards or goals that their teams or direct reports are aware of. On top of that, the solid majority of architects and engineers are non-confrontational when it comes to their communication styles, so they rarely deliver the message people need to hear unless the news is good. This is why we have always been big proponents of open-book management and widespread sharing of all performance metrics firmwide. 6)A healthy culture can make ordinary people exceptional, but an unhealthy culture can quickly ruin great people. There was a recent article I read on this subject of how corrupt stock brokers can quickly corrupt new employees, but those with high ethical standards would result in more of the same in new brokers. The findings didn’t surprise me. They apply to
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THE ZWEIG LETTER December 30, 2019, ISSUE 1325
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