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BUSINESS NEWS $368 MILLION SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CONSOLIDATION PROJECT FOR CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD AWARDED TO DESIGN-BUILD TEAM OF HENSEL PHELPS | ZGF | AFFILIATED ENGINEERS, INC. The Department of General Services has awarded the new Southern California Consolidation project for the California Air Resources Board to the design- build team of Hensel Phelps, ZGF Architects LLP , and Affiliated Engineers, Inc. The $368 million, 380,000-square-foot, 19-acre project will be located in Riverside near the UC Riverside campus. It will be one of the largest and most advanced vehicle emissions testing and research facilities in the world, and the largest true zero net energy facility of its type in the world – generating more energy than it uses. Consolidating the organization’s five existing locations, currently spread throughout Los Angeles, into a single location, the state- of-the-art facility will house more than 400 employees and include an extended range of dedicated test cells, an advanced chemistry laboratory, workspace for accommodating new test methods for future generations of vehicles, space for developing enhanced onboard diagnostics and portable emissions measurement systems, offices, visitor reception and education areas, a media center, flexible conference areas, and a large public auditorium.

The facility and campus will be designed and built to reach the highest possible levels of measured sustainability, with the intention to achieve LEED Platinum certification and to meet California’s CALGreen Tier 2 threshold for overall sustainability and energy efficiency. The unique design will provide a seamless consolidation and integration of the office program into a three-story, pinwheel- shaped building. Vertical connectivity will increase proximity and interaction between departments, while horizontal circulation will provide links with testing areas, support space, and laboratories, resulting in greater flexibility and collaboration. This pinwheel concept creates a Central Command Control area that forms the nexus of the new CARB campus. The high-performance campus will feature abundant open and green spaces, as well as nature walks for al fresco breaks and informal meetings alike. ZGF is a design firm with an intentionally diverse portfolio, including healthcare and research facilities, academic buildings, mixed- use developments, corporate campuses, museums, transportation facilities, and eco- districts. AEI is a leading U.S.-based multidisciplinary consulting engineering firm that plans, designs, and delivers high-performance engineered systems for technically complex

building and utility infrastructure projects. The firm specializes in the industrial test and manufacturing, research, energy production and distribution, higher education, healthcare, mission-critical, and sustainability markets. HUNTER ENGINEERING AWARDS NELSON-MILLER 2017 SUPPLIER EXCELLENCE AWARD Nelson- Miller, Inc. , a leading design, engineering, and manufacturing group focused on providing solutions for the human-machine interface market, announced that it has received the prestigious Supplier Excellence Award from its long-standing client, Hunter Engineering. Hunter Engineering evaluated 375 companies from its broad range of suppliers against the following criteria: ❚ ❚ Reject rate of parts shipped ❚ ❚ Number of lots rejected ❚ ❚ Quantity of “vendor fault/quality” manufacturing interruptions ❚ ❚ Overall delivery performance ❚ ❚ Competitive pricing ❚ ❚ Value-added service variables “Nelson-Miller is delighted to receive the Supplier Excellence Award from Hunter Engineering, and this is a testimony to our customer-centric approach, which drives everything we do here,” said Jim Kaldem, president of Nelson-Miller.

CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES, from page 3

steal your unique strategy for client follow-up or your plan to do more social media marketing. 5)Include metrics, goals, and a budget. Don’t be afraid to state these things because you might not achieve them. Ac- cording to Zweig Group’s 2017 Marketing Survey , of the firms that have a marketing plan, just around half include a budget. That’s crazy! You need to know how much your firm has to spend on marketing efforts and a potential return on these expenditures. The most important thing about your marketing plan is that it reflects your brand and your firm’s unique characteristics and strengths. No one should be able to “steal” your strategy because it’s representative of your firm’s experiences and people – and there are no two firms in the world that are identical in this regard. If you don’t have a marketing plan, break out a clean sheet of paper and get to work! CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES is Zweig Group’s director of marketing. Contact her at christinaz@zweiggroup.com. “The most important thing about your marketing plan is that it reflects your brand and your firm’s unique characteristics and strengths. No one should be able to ‘steal’ your strategy because it’s representative of your firm’s experiences and people.”

❚ ❚ How you plan to reach clients ❚ ❚ How you will retain clients

That’s it! Here are a few more tips for your marketing plan.

1)Don’t involve too many people. You don’t need a commit- tee to put together a marketing plan. This may be controver- sial, but I think it’s better to have one person start with the overall structure of the marketing plan. Later in the process it can be added to by others, but the people writing the market- ing plan need to be limited and highly qualified. 2)Don’t obsess over the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). It’s important to know these things, especially from a strategic perspective, but you don’t need a highly detailed list with hundreds of items. The best place to get information for your SWOT is from a simple em- ployee or client survey. A committee made up of every princi- pal in the firm may not be the ideal group to assess and define a SWOT. You need objectivity and a broad perspective. 3)Start with something simple and basic. When it comes to a marketing plan, something is better than nothing. Don’t delay doing the entire marketing plan because you’re not sure of an exact strategy for a new market. 4)Once it’s done, share it. Some version of your marketing plan should be available to nearly every employee in your firm. I can promise you that no one is going to successfully

THE ZWEIG LETTER April 16, 2018, ISSUE 1244

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