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TRANSACTIONS WSB, MINNEAPOLIS-BASED DESIGN AND CONSULTING FIRM, ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF AE WSB LLC, one of the nation’s fastest growing infrastructure engineering and consulting firms, today announced the acquisition of AE Engineering, Inc., a high-growth transportation infrastructure engineering firm based in Jacksonville, Florida. The strategic addition of AE will solidify WSB’s presence and service offerings in the southeastern United States. WSB is a portfolio company of GHK Capital Partners LP, a leading middle-market private equity firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut. “WSB is moving forward in building a

national brand,” said Bret Weiss, WSB’s president and chief executive officer. “The Southeast is an important market for transportation infrastructure engineering given the significant population growth and infrastructure investment present in the region. AE has an outstanding reputation, and their leaders match our culture with their approach and entrepreneurial spirit. We are eager to build on the success of AE by introducing expanded services to complement their already successful program.” The acquisition of AE brings 13 offices and more than 170 employees into WSB across the Southeast. Combined, WSB now operates 49 offices with more than 1,250 employees nationwide to

serve its clients across the government, commercial and energy markets. “WSB is a strong and growing firm that is an excellent match for AE and our clients,” said Rod Myrick, AE’s president. “We’ve always tried to represent the best in the industry and to be a trusted asset to our clients and partners. AE is joining a firm with that same commitment. We are eager to build on the strengths and success of WSB by introducing expanded services to complement our existing operation in Florida and throughout the Southeast.” WSB and AE will work together to develop a single go-to market approach as WSB in the coming months.

feedback we got from this conversation was around the frustration of the room’s end-users and their high sense of urgency to resolve the issue. 4. Envisioning. With the information gathered from the previous steps, we then transitioned from framing the problem to imagining and coming up with solutions. For problems like this one where we have a clear desire vision, we use a backcasting approach, which focuses on reverse engineering the path to success from the future desired outcome to the present moment. The goal of this strategy is clearly identifying a list of the long-term, near future, and immediate actions. In this example, the goal was to get the rooms to operate at the appropriate temperature. Then, we listed everything that needed to take place to make this vision a reality and categorized them per the level of priority as the backcasting strategy requires. It took the team three weeks to design a non-invasive solution and a few more weeks for the solution to be implemented. As we were conducting Step 3, everybody in the room was appreciative of us having a structure in place to help them see the light at the end of the tunnel. By the time we were sitting in the room, we had a narrow focus on what we though the root cause was which gave the stakeholder peace of mind. Having a service recovery mindset in your projects is essential in order to keep your organization’s sustained competitive advantage. From my experience on our service management culture, when we enter the recovery phase our team must tune into their soft skills and be equipped with a simple methodology that allows them to navigate the process in a consistent manner. “Turning up the soft” is our trigger phrase to focus on the intangibles of service recovery, including attentiveness, proactive communication, responsiveness, flexibility, and empathy. I would guarantee if you invested in your team to juggle these soft areas effectively, you would turn your clients into raving fans. Leisbel Lam, PE, LC, MBA is a principal at Michaud Cooley Erickson. Connect with him on LinkedIn .

LEISBEL LAM, from page 7

2. Peeling. On this step, we dive deep to identify the root cause of the problem from the information gathered on the previous step. This is also the stage where the team investigates issues thoroughly, peeling back the layers to understand underlying drivers and systemic contributors. In this example, we identified that rooms with a significant amount of large equipment were designed based on the initial design development equipment list which was not updated during the construction document phase. Finding this key piece of information allowed us to focus on this as the main potential issue. It also highlighted a gap in our quality assurance process. “From my experience on our service management culture, when we enter the recovery phase our team must tune into their soft skills and be equipped with a simple methodology that allows them to navigate the process in a consistent manner.” 3. Empathizing. On this step, we put ourselves in other people’s shoes to understand how they perceive the problem. An effective way to tackle this is to create a list of stakeholders who are directly and indirectly affected by the issue. Then, compartmentalize them by departments and level of influence and interest in the issue. Finally, create an empathy strategy guided with questions like these: What do they think, how are they acting, what are they saying, and what are they feeling? In this example, we scheduled an on-site meeting with the critical stakeholders with the goal of telling them what we discovered in Step 2 and gathering the information needed to draft and execute a strategy. The common

THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 27, 2024, ISSUE 1539

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