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Partner employees at a Habitat for Humanity build in California.
DECISION-MAKING, from page 7
faster and cheaper. We invest in in-house custom solutions and have a room full of programmers innovating and test- ing solutions in real time. TZL: The seller-doer model is very successful, but with growth you need to adapt to new models. What is your program? JD: The seller-doer model is only about one third of our business development team. The rest of our BD staff are pure sellers. TZL: Diversity and inclusion is lacking. What steps are you taking to address the issue? JD: Five of the first nine principals were women and Part- ner is a majority women-owned business. Our two highest paid employees are women – I am number three. We’ve al- ways been a gender-balanced meritocracy and have not fo- cused on any gender centric hiring, but starting out very female has propagated that culture. If we were a case study, the conclusion would be that talented females are more in- terested in joining a very co-ed firm like ours rather than trying to pioneer in some firm where management has been a boy’s club for 50 years. TZL: Tell us about the last time you named a new princi- pal from outside the firm. JD: We would consider a person joining the firm as a prin- cipal if we were very familiar with them, knew them via an- other partner, and they brought in significant business.
the commitment and dedication of Partner’s executives to its continued success. I think three people in our C-suite could do my job. TZL: With technology reducing the time it takes to com- plete design work, how do you get the AEC industry to start pricing on value instead of hours? JD: We do a lot of lump sum work – we win when we can template our designs and do them over and over again. New challenges and original designs are great for learning but not for profit – of course, learning is important, too. “If we were a case study, the conclusion would be that talented females are more interested in joining a very co-ed firm like ours rather than trying to pioneer in some firm where management has been a boy’s club for 50 years.” TZL: If the worker shortage continues, do you see wag- es increasing to encourage more talent to enter the AEC space, or will technology be used to counter the reduced workforce? JD: We need to use technology to do everything better,
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THE ZWEIG LETTER February 18, 2019, ISSUE 1284
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