TZL 1372 (web)

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P R O F I L E

Positive impact: Darin Anderson Chairman and CEO of Salas O’Brien, an employee-owned firm with no corporate headquarters that provides building and facility solutions to clients across the United States.

By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent

A s chairman and CEO, it’s up to Anderson to ensure Salas O’Brien remains a leading engineering, architecture, commissioning, and technology firm. The company delivers more than 5,000 projects per year and has had zero professional liability or errors and omissions claims in its company history. “Relationships are everything to us,” Anderson says. A CONVERSATION WITH DARIN ANDERSON. The Zweig Letter: Your website states that you’re currently helping federal agencies and private sector companies adapt to meet the healthcare challenges caused by COVID-19. Can you provide an example or two of projects that you’re currently working on related to this? Darin Anderson: This has been very fulfilling work for our team. A couple of examples include temporary hospital facilities in Georgia that our team helped design using shipping containers, and several facilities in Illinois where

we helped open shuttered hospitals to serve as alternative care sites. We are now shifting our focus to helping clients of all sorts assess their facilities and help make them as healthy and safe as possible. That said, we will continue adapting as the pandemic progresses – if a new healthcare focus becomes needed, we have the team and experience to quickly respond. TZL: How has COVID-19 impacted your firm’s policy on telecommuting/working remotely? DA: People often don’t believe me when I say that we have no corporate headquarters. Both our executive and technical leadership are spread across the country and are highly comfortable working virtually. That’s why it was not a huge cultural shift for us to move essentially all employees to remote work. While some of our offices now have team members working from the office in a more limited capacity, we are comfortable with and support our team’s productivity from whatever location keeps them safe and healthy. Looking to the future, our team’s

THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEM

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