TZL 1295

BUSINESS NEWS WALLER, TODD & SADLER PROJECT WINS APWA PROJECT OF THE YEAR AWARD The Virginia Beach Housing Resource Center has been awarded the 2019 American Public Works Association Mid-Atlantic Chapter Project of the Year Award. The Virginia Beach Department of Public Works facility was honored in the category of structures between $25 million and $75 million. Waller, Todd & Sadler , a Woolpert company, designed the $27 million, 63,000-square-foot site. The new facility is one of the first of its type to use a consolidated campus-style approach to serve different housing groups within one building and provide multi-layered services to clients with coordinated assessment and case management on-site. The Housing Resource Center, completed in 2018, was designed to support the efforts of the department of Virginia Beach Housing and Neighborhood Preservation by providing a one-stop shop of services, resources and training for at-risk individuals working toward permanent housing. The most vulnerable homeless families and individuals will be sheltered and housed at the facility and will have access to the support services they need. The three-story facility includes dormitories

with 49 beds for singles needing emergency shelter, 40 beds in short-term motel-style rooms for families, and 30 one-bedroom efficiency apartments for long-term residents. The Day Center provides services such as laundry, mail, showers and counseling services to anyone in need. The Housing Resource Center provides multiple community resources for facility residents and city residents, including access to an independent health care clinic and the offices of the Virginia Department of Social Services. The clinic and the department have exterior entrances and access from within the facility to support the mission of the Housing Resource Center. Five dedicated entrances were required to provide access to the programs in the facility and to meet the design challenge to facilitate “integration while providing separation.” Waller, Todd & Sadler Project Manager Maureen McElfresh said, “It was gratifying to be able to provide this beautiful, versatile and highly functional facility and support those in need of assistance, furthering the great work of the city.” This was the first collaborative project between Waller, Todd & Sadler and Woolpert, which acquired the award-winning firm in January of

this year. Woolpert provided civil engineering services for the Housing Resource Center, while Waller, Todd & Sadler served as the architect of record. S.B. Ballard Construction Company was the contractor for this project. This project also is in the running for the national APWA award, to be presented this month. Waller, Todd & Sadler, a Woolpert Company, offers architecture, planning, interior design and LEED services to both public and private sector clients. It is a testimony to the firm’s professional abilities and commitment to customer service that approximately 90 percent of Waller, Todd & Sadler’s work is from repeat clients. Woolpert is the fastest growing architecture, engineering and geospatial firm in the country and is ranked 95th among ENR’s Top 500 Design Firms and 18th on the Zweig Hot Firms List. For more than 100 years and with 28 offices across the U.S., the firm serves federal, state and local governments; private and public companies and universities; energy and transportation departments; and the U.S. Armed Forces.

DARIN ANDERSON, from page 9

for talented people, our retention rate since beginning our M&A strategy is 98 percent for mid- and senior-level leaders and more than 90 percent for the entire team. People appreci- ate that our values come first and are lived out in everyday life, and most want to stick around for the long term because their values are our values. “Our ‘ownership values,’ which define what it means to be an employee-owner of Salas O’Brien, state that we ‘encourage the growth of our owners’ and ‘provide positive energy, passion, and commitment to everything we do.’ We could not be true to our identity without pursuing aggressive growth.” My industry colleagues look at our growth and see something astronomical and unsustainable (though they’re usually polite enough not to say it). But we’ve really been quite deliberate and steady with our strategy, focusing on the “why” and “how” and building a team of people who are committed to Salas O’Brien and our shared values (including growth). Find your “why” and “how,” and I think you’ll also achieve growth that no one else thought was possible. DARIN ANDERSON is CEO of Salas O’Brien. Contact him at darin. anderson@salasobrien.com.

❚ ❚ How? Our approach with mergers can be summed up as: Build national strength with local action. We don’t want to create a top-down, highly centralized organization, although we strive for efficiency wherever we can get it and have a uni- fied brand and values. Instead, we look for healthy organiza- tions that already fit our values and have strong leadership in place, and then integrate these organizations into the larger structure of Salas O’Brien. Do merger candidates believe me when I say Salas O’Brien isn’t coming in to run the show? Most probably don’t. But it’s true: No one from Salas O’Brien comes in to run the newly merged business. We just want to integrate everyone into the life and fabric of the organization, so we can all grow in an organic, collaborative manner. Your “how” may be different from ours, just as your “why” might be. Maybe your strategy is to find value in turning around companies. But whatever your strategy, if growth is your aim, you as a leader need to get clear on your approach, and communicate that approach clearly in your existing com- pany as well as in those you intend to merge with or acquire. ❚ ❚ The results. Does it really work? History will be our ultimate judge, but so far, all I can tell you is that we have grown 2,000 percent since 2006, from a single office in San Jose, Califor- nia, to (at this writing) 19 offices around the country. For the past six years we have been on the Inc. 5000 list of our coun- try’s fastest-growing private firms, and we continue climbing the ranks of the ENR and MEP Giants lists as well. But more importantly, in an industry with historically low unemployment and an almost unlimited number of options

THE ZWEIG LETTER May 6, 2019, ISSUE 1295

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