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ON THE MOVE BROWN AND CALDWELL HIRES SEASONED INDUSTRIAL WATER EXPERT Leading environmental engineering and construction firm Brown and Caldwell announced Randall Watts has joined the company as industrial water senior process engineer. Having spent his 24-year career until now at Merck, Watts brings an impressive background of specializedwater andwastewater experience in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. He has served as technical lead on numerous high-profile projects to improve treatment system performance — including the treatment of endocrine-disrupting compounds and other active pharmaceutical ingredients and constituents — at production facilities in multiple countries. His expertise covers water supply and sustainability, wastewater process design, wastewater system optimization, field and pilot study design and coordination, system start-up and operational support, and operational efficiency.
As a key addition to Brown and Caldwell’s Industrial Water Group, Watts will be responsible for developing and implementing tailored solutions to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry’s most complex water and wastewater challenges. Watts will lead process engineering and design on projects encompassing water use reduction, water and wastewater treatment and reuse, active pharmaceutical ingredient management, nutrient removal, smart utilities, and systems operation and optimization. “I am delighted to welcome Randall to our team of industrial water experts,” said Brown and Caldwell Director of Industrial Water Si Givens. “His deep knowledge of chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing and water and wastewater treatment in these industries will provide our clients with heightened technical knowledge, rigor, innovation, and responsiveness, translating to the
development of unique and robust solutions that provide long-term value.” Based in Philadelphia, Watts has a doctorate and a master’s in environmental engineering and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the University of Florida. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, Brown and Caldwell is a full-service environmental engineering and construction firm with 52 offices and more than 1,700 professionals across North America and the Pacific. For more than 70 years, our creative solutions have helped municipalities, private industry, and government agencies successfully overcome their most challenging water and environmental obstacles. As an employee-owned company, Brown and Caldwell is passionate about exceeding our clients’ expectations and making a difference for our employees, our communities, and our environment.
JULIE BENEZET, from page 3
with underhanded schemes for stepping over others to gain advantage. In fact, politics merely means how people interact, with whom, and why. To make sure your colleagues include you in their pursuit of external work and support yours, become an expert on your firm’s practice groups and geographies. Three tools will help: ❚ ❚ Study the firm organization chart. Identify the key decision makers, influencers, and information sources. Who talks to whom and, better, who listens to whom? Then you will know where to spend your time. ❚ ❚ Consult or initiate the creation of a central database. A database of firm skills, experience and clients will inform firm members as to what talent is available and minimize overlapping new business campaigns. ❚ ❚ Dedicate time and energy to cultivating relationships. People have a tendency to reach out to familiar faces. If you feel someone is ignoring you, more likely they feel more comfortable defaulting to known quantities. 5)Find a mentor to model the way. Seasoned business developers have well-practiced techniques gleaned from experience. However, if you ask them for pointers, they might struggle to describe what they do. The best way is to shadow them to client meetings, observe, and debrief afterwards. Business development fuels the firm engine. It therefore behooves firms to devote significant time and energy to cultivating its leaders’ ability to deliver it. Everyone will benefit. JULIE BENEZET spent 25 years in law and business, and for the past 18 years has coached, taught and consulted with executives from virtually every industry. She earned her stripes for leading in the scariness of the new as Amazon’s first global real estate executive. She is author of the award-winning The Journey of Not Knowing: How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None . Her workbook, The Journal of Not Knowing , provides a self-guided discovery mission to navigate the adventure of pursuing one’s dreams based on the Journey principles. She can be reached at juliebenezet. com.
with no template.” A building project has a schedule, budget, and a standard action plan to guide the way. Business development follows no playbook. While most firms have organized lists of marketing prospects, PowerPoint decks and generic materials, as anyone who has survived the mind-numbing weekly marketing meeting will tell you, they support but do not deliver work. Instead, winning work requires leaving the office to explore the market. That means asking probing questions about trends and creating unique strategies for each prospective client. In this uncharted journey, you might encounter the discomfort of talking with people you barely know, hearing questions you can’t answer, and proposing new project offerings that, while doable, will steepen your firm’s learning curve. The only way to overcome discomfort is to embrace it. It’s intrinsic to trying something new. The more you stretch, however, the easier and more enjoyable the process becomes. “Business development fuels the firm engine. It therefore behooves firms to devote significant time and energy to cultivating its leaders’ ability to deliver it. Everyone will benefit.” 3)Manage your time commitments strategically. Time is always in short supply, particularly as people juggle work and home. Layering business development onto that challenge requires smart time management. Winning client work covers a continuum of promoting your skills via speeches, articles and interviews, courting new clients, delivering stellar services, tending relationships, and gathering market intelligence. Allocate your time across all these activities to make sure each receives deliberate if only brief attention. 4)Give serious attention to firm politics. People often recoil when they hear the word, “politics.” They equate them
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THE ZWEIG LETTER AUGUST 17, 2020, ISSUE 1357
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