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BUSINESS NEWS BECHTEL PARTNERS WITH STATION HOUSTON TO SUPPORT NEXT GENERATION OF INNOVATORS Bechtel , a global leader in engineering, procurement, and construction, and Station Houston, Houston’s hub for technology and innovation, announced the launch of a corporate partnership to connect local startups with industry experts. The partnership will focus on enhancing opportunities for local entrepreneurs through mentoring and engagement in solving EPC challenges. “Corporate engagement is a critical pillar in our vision to build an entrepreneurship ecosystem

in Houston. Through our partnership with industry leaders like Bechtel, talented entrepreneurs will get access to leading expertise as they create solutions for problem- sets that will impact our economy in years and decades to come,” said John Reale, Station Houston’s co-founder and CEO. “We are excited to work with Station Houston and its vibrant innovation community to create solutions for our industry’s biggest challenges, and inspire the next generation of innovators,” said David Wilson, Bechtel’s chief innovation officer.

The partnership will include a team of Bechtel innovators working with Houston entrepreneurs in workshops to advance innovative solutions for the industry. Bechtel is one of the most respected global engineering, construction, and project management companies. Together with its customers, Bechtel delivers landmark projects that foster long-term progress and economic growth. Since 1898, we’ve completed more than 25,000 extraordinary projects across 160 countries on all seven continents.

EDWARD FRIEDRICHS, from page 3

He turned and said, “You were in the city council meeting tonight; that was a great presentation. What do you do?” I explained my circumstances and he said he had a little architectural firm in San Francisco. He said they were hiring and that he’d like to talk to me. It was Art Gensler. We set an appointment for an interview. He didn’t show, but he called and apologized profusely, saying he was with a client and clients always come first. Instead, he invited me to his house up on a hillside in Tiburon looking toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Up until that time, my idea of success in life was to join Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the most highly respected firm in the nation. But they were not hiring. Nor was anyone else in town. As Art and I sat outside his house, we drank a bottle of wine and talked about the future of the profession of architecture. We were in complete agreement which, I think, surprised us both. As we wrapped up, he offered me a job and I joined Gensler about two weeks later, commuting in to San Francisco every day on the ferry with Art, giving us a lot to time to talk about where to take the firm. I’m not sure it would be possible to replicate that story, but I’ll provide a few thoughts. First, be honest. Don’t try to puff up yourself or your credentials. Explore the nature of the job and, more importantly, the idea behind the company with the hiring manager or leader. Ask lots of questions and be thoroughly forthcoming with the answers you give. Never fake it. If you’re joining an organization that is headed in a certain direction, learn what that is and if that is where you want to go. Decide if, by the nature of your interests and skills, you can (and want to) make a contribution to achieving those ends. If you aren’t aligned, move on to the next opportunity. Thirty-four years later, we had grown to 2,400 people in 25 offices around the country with a few overseas, and I had been president of the firm for seven years and CEO for the final three. We had grown dramatically without a merger or an acquisition and the firm today is 50 percent larger than when I retired. I’ll explain how and why that “no mergers, no acquisitions” strategy was so important in my next article. EDWARD FRIEDRICHS, FAIA, FIIDA, is a consultant with Zweig Group and the former CEO and president of Gensler. Contact him at efriedrichs@zweiggroup.com.

He said, “You’re a young architect. You can figure out how to build something here, right?” Sure, why not? He was going to pay me for my efforts. It required that I hang over the cliff in a boatswain’s chair tied to an oak tree holding a surveyor’s pole and getting an outrageous case of poison oak, to get measurements. A friend who was the surveyor on the development site I was working on north of San Rafael, managed to do a topographical map of the site. When we checked the boundaries against the deed, the lot was not where it was supposed to be. The exit road from the island ran across the property and down into Main Street. A young lawyer friend in Tiburon, along with the surveyor, concluded that this would require a quit-claim action with the city and a quiet-title action to realign the lot to conform with the curbs that defined the two streets. “Ask lots of questions and be thoroughly forthcoming with the answers you give. Never fake it. If you’re joining an organization that is headed in a certain direction, learn what that is and if that is where you want to go.” That led to many meetings with the city council, the planning commission, and the architectural review board. The big question was, “If we approve this, is it a legal lot and what kind of protests can we expect from the neighbors, since this was always thought of as just a shoulder between the two streets?” My little team and I secured a “final” hearing with the city council. I came in with a model and lovely drawings to be confronted by protestors from Corinthian Island carrying picket signs claiming that we were going to kill someone if a house were allowed to be built on the property. By the end of my presentation and the vote of the city council, our plan was approved to everyone’s surprise. The surveyor, the lawyer, my landlord, and I went off to a local bar to celebrate. As we compared notes about the hearing, a big guy on the barstool next to me kept bumping into me. I finally offered him my barstool, as well.

THE ZWEIG LETTER April 2, 2018, ISSUE 1242

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