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BUSINESS NEWS LOCAL LAB SUPERVISOR HAD TO WORK FROM HOME SO HE BUILT A LAB IN HIS GARAGE On March 15 last year, in anticipation of state and local restrictions, Urban Engineers sent out an email informing all employees that they would need to commence working from home until further notice. For some of the company’s 450 employees, the idea of working in sweatpants and snacking in their own kitchens was appealing, but for laboratory supervisor Jeremy Hull the office had one essential thing his home didn’t – a materials testing laboratory. “At first, I hoped it would be a temporary thing, but when it was clear I would be home for a while, I started to think about how I could build a lab at home,” he said. Hull had two big projects on his plate at the time – helping Penn State test soils for a brand-new $26 million building on its Behrend Campus in Erie and helping test soils for a new four-story waterfront project with 116 apartments along the Delaware River in Philadelphia. In other words, two big projects that needed to move forward. So Jeremy began clearing away his dirt bike projects that currently filled his detached two-
car garage and started a list of equipment he needed to do his job. He sent the list to his supervisor and received permission to borrow a scale, an oven, an Atterberg limits machine and a RO-TAP sieve shaker. Once he set it up in his garage, he was good to go. “I would wake up early and fire up the wood stove I had in the garage, go make some coffee and then get to work,” he said. According to Jennifer Waters, who leads Urban’s Philadelphia office, Hull’s drive to get the job done is part of the company’s DNA. “The pandemic hit our clients hard,” she said. “It became clear that going forward, innovation was going to be a key component to infrastructure projects.” To organize everything the company learned last year, Waters help launch Urban’s Innovation Team in January. “We want to make sure we’re well-informed on tools, technologies and techniques that will impact our clients, future services, and communities,” she said. Another key part of Urban’s DNA is that it is 100 percent employee owned. As an ESOP company, Urban is owned by its employees and governed by a board of directors that is
elected by the staff. Instead of profits going to a group of shareholders – who might not even work for the company – ESOP shares are distributed to all employees of the firm. Everyone is invested in the company and motivated to foster its growth. “Employee-owned businesses are full of people who take ownership of their work instead of merely clocking in. On average, they are 8 percent to 12 percent more productive year-over-year than nonemployee-owned businesses,” said Kevin McPhillips executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership (PaCEO). Urban is just one of more than 285 Pennsylvania companies who are employee- owned. Other ESOPs based in Pennsylvania include Dansko Shoes, NewAge Industries and NCC Automated Systems. Nationally, more than 5,000 companies have ESOPs. “We ended the year with increased revenue, despite the challenges our firm and companies across the country faced,” Corey Fenwick, Urban’s senior strategic communications specialist, said. “When things got tough, we all remembered we are owners of our firm – and Urban’s reputation – so we did what we had to in order to deliver for our clients.”
CARLOS PENIN, from page 3
As a result of the testimony that we offered the Subcommittee, they determined that, “it will be important to ensure consistency in the application of the credits clause across agencies.” Subsequently, on March 24, 2021, the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration released a memorandum to offer guidance to clarify requirements for architectural and engineering consultants. The DOT FHWA guidance clarified that the reduced indirect cost rate would only be applied until the rate is fully recovered and thus it is not required to reduce indirect rates for the entirety of a multi-year contract. While some consultants may need to repay the PPP loan through the reduced indirect rates, we will not need to pay more than what we received in PPP loans. This is a step in the right direction. Finally, it is important to keep monitoring Congressional action to ensure that the benefits of the PPP loans are equitable across the board. This way, companies like mine that are eager to work for State and Federal agencies can do so. It will take the participation and willingness of the best and the brightest for us to come out of this pandemic and make a full recovery. We cannot allow ourselves to be held back by arbitrary interpretations that have a negative impact on our business and our profession. Stay alert and continue to participate. CARLOS PENIN, PE, is president and CEO of C.A.P. Engineering, which he founded in 1989. Contact him at cap@capfla.com.
rate and if we had multi-year contracts, we could lose more money in the long-term than the original loan value. This was also expressed by Greenleaf, who in addition is the Chair-Elect of the American Council of Engineering Companies. Greenleaf explained that, other businesses on the same infrastructure projects are not affected by FAR and receive the full benefit of the PPP. As I testified to Chairman Kweisi Mfume and the other members of the Committee the easiest way to handle the issue would be to provide clarification of the FAR interpretation and allow us to benefit from the PPP, like many other participating businesses. This is especially critical at a time when Congress and the Biden Administration are working on a major infrastructure bill. These future projects will require the participation of firms like ours to be able to deliver the infrastructure needs. If not corrected, the FAR interpretation could cause many firms to reconsider their participation in government contracts and potentially hinder the economic recovery intended by these projects. “While some consultants may need to repay the PPP loan through the reduced indirect rates, we will not need to pay more than what we received in PPP loans. This is a step in the right direction.”
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THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 17, 2021, ISSUE 1392
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