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BUSINESS NEWS RUSSELL AND DAWSON STARTS CONSTRUCTION OF HAMPTON INN & SUITES FOR JAMSAN HOTEL MANAGEMENT GROUP Russell and Dawson , Hartford-based architecture, engineering and construction firm, announced construction of a Hampton Inn & Suites at Keene, New Hampshire for the Lexington, Massachusetts based Jamsan Hotel Management company. The construction of a four-story, 58,000-square-foot, 100-room Hampton Inn & Suites hotel on 2.25-acre site is slated to complete May 2019. At the Hampton Inn located in Keene, New Hampshire, Russell and Dawson was selected by Jazzlyn Hospitality II LLC to provide architecture, engineering, and construction

services. Jamsan Hotel Management is selected as the management company for the hotel. The design scheme for the Hampton Inn & Suites in Keene includes elements such as stucco, brick, indoor swimming pool, metal and glass, and will follow standard protypical brand design standards. “Since 1965, we have provided architectural design and engineering services to more than 200 hotel projects in the northeast market. We recently added construction services to become design-build contractor, this is our second design-build hotel project in the northeast region,” said Chirag Thaker, president of Russell and Dawson. “We have done number of hotel projects for Jamsan

Hotel Management group and are thankful to them for continuing to put their trust in our expertise and experience.” “Russell and Dawson has been our A/E firm for the many hotel projects of ours. Recently they provided architecture and engineering services for our Holiday Inn Express at Chelmsford, this is the first project for us where we have selected them to provide comprehensive AEC services as a design-build contractor,” said Ashok Patel, developer of the Keene project. Russell and Dawson is a client-first architectural design, engineering, and construction services firm based out of Hartford, Connecticut.

JUNE JEWELL, from page 9

have less time to replace them and get mid-level managers ready for leadership. ❚ ❚ Some of your business units may be underperforming or fail- ing altogether, and it can become more difficult to turn them around in a fast-paced work environment. Leading an AEC firm in this time-compressed environment can be more challenging than in a slow-growth phase. You will have less time to make critical decisions and potentially less options as well. “Working hard is preferable to hardly working, but also has an opportunity cost. Leaders can mitigate the negative side of being busy by being aware of potential hazards, and developing strategies to ensure the positives outweigh the negatives.” If you can recognize and anticipate many of the repercussions of your expanding workload, then you have an opportunity to minimize their negative consequences. Preparing for the detrimental effects of being busy that can cause reduced profits, stall expected growth, or lead to poor staff performance is the key to ensuring that your firm experiences a mostly positive impact of being swamped with work. To anticipate and plan for these potential unwanted outcomes, review the list above and proactively develop strategies to deal with each challenge. Being busy is better than the alternative, but it won’t last forever. Working hard is preferable to hardly working, but also has an opportunity cost. Leaders can mitigate the negative side of being busy by being aware of potential hazards, and developing strategies to ensure the positives outweigh the negatives. JUNE JEWELL is a CPA and author of the best-selling book Find the Lost Dollars: 6 Steps to Increase Profits in Architecture, Engineering and Environmental Firms . She is president of AEC Business Solutions, focused on developing business assessment tools and online training for project managers to help A/E firms make more money on their projects. Learn more about how to improve your employee and firm financial performance at aecbusiness.com.

❚ ❚ Employees are more highly utilized. ❚ ❚ You don’t have to panic about sales as much. With a higher backlog, the pressure is reduced to go out and find more work. ❚ ❚ You can be more selective about clients and projects, and turn away work that has low profit margins or is not in line with your strategic plan. ❚ ❚ Your cash flow improves, and you have less stress about mak- ing payroll. ❚ ❚ It may be easier to grow and expand service offerings – if you have the people and the time. The curse of being so busy: ❚ ❚ Because of the shortage of experienced staff, you may end up settling for people that are not as talented. ❚ ❚ Employees’ heads are down and too busy to pay attention to project scopes and budgets. As a result, there is money left on the table, increases in scope creep, and profit margins are not increasing at the same rate as revenues. ❚ ❚ Your firm leaders are getting pulled in many directions and may not have enough time to focus on the firm’s most impor- tant strategic goals. ❚ ❚ Important internal initiatives get stalled because key staff are too busy working on projects to work on non-billable, non- urgent but important business improvements. ❚ ❚ Despite the fact that work is abundant, clients are still exert- ing great pressure to reduce fees. ❚ ❚ In many markets across the country, salary and benefit costs are increasing faster than fees, causing profit margins to de- crease. ❚ ❚ You may have to turn work away because of a lack of avail- able resources. You may also have to subcontract out work that normally you would do in-house. This was inconceivable about 10 years ago, but now you have no choice. ❚ ❚ Important training and development is put on hold. In a time when less experienced staff are available, it is more critical to accelerate employees through their career path and increase project management effectiveness. ❚ ❚ As your older, more experienced employees retire, you will

THE ZWEIG LETTER October 1, 2018, ISSUE 1266

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