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ON THE MOVE BURNS WELCOMES VICE PRESIDENT – NEW YORK REGION JOSEPH MIZRAHI, PE Burns Engineering, Inc. welcomes Joseph Mizrahi, PE, as vice president – New York Region. Mizrahi will manage Burns’ New York office, and will focus on strengthening relationships with existing clients, and building relationships with new organizations. A strategic visionary, Mizrahi comes to Burns with extensive expertise in engineering design, construction, and commissioning, most recently as assistant vice president of engineering and facilities at NYU Winthrop Hospital. Mizrahi has also served as the managing partner at an MEP engineering firm in the New York Area, and senior electrical engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His background in the design and management of large capital transportation, energy, power infrastructure, higher education, healthcare facilities, commercial building, and facilities projects adds tremendous depth and value to our team. Notably, Mizrahi was

involved with the design of PANYNJ’s $100 million fire alarm system at the original World Trade Center complex, and more recently, the complete restoration of the Coney Island Aquarium, including power generation for the entire site. RICHARD WEED, PE, JOINS ATWELL Consulting, engineering, and construction services firm Atwell, LLC announced that Richard Weed, PE, has joined the firm working in the land development group in Denver, Colorado. As senior project manager, he will provide leadership support to project teams while promoting and expanding Atwell’s services into emerging geographic markets throughout the Rocky Mountain Region. Weed is an accomplished leader with extensive experience in both public and private land development in the Rocky Mountain Region. He is a knowledgeable engineer with significant experience in large scale residential and commercial projects and has deep roots

in Colorado. He was the owner and president of Carroll & Lange, Inc. , a well-known, 160-person civil engineering and survey firm based in Lakewood. Weed led all aspects of the company, including strategic direction, business development and product quality for the firm. Weed is a long-time Colorado resident and is committed to the success of the region. He earned both an MBA from the University of Colorado, Denver, and a B.S. in civil engineering from University of Colorado, Boulder. He is a registered professional engineer in Colorado and Arizona, which aligns well with Atwell’s expanding Western operations. “We are excited to have Rick on our team,” said Atwell Director, Jeff French, PE. “In addition to the industry knowledge and expertise he brings, we look forward to tapping into his mentoring abilities to help our Denver staff grow.”

MARC FLORIAN, from page 11

usage, some providers will even allow you to roll-over the unused minutes to the next month. In either case, it’s not rocket science; the phone company sells you a plan, tracks what you use, and charges you for it. So, how would this concept work in a typical A/E firm? First, you would want to use payroll, labor billings, or gross revenues to establish a base plan – just like your firm is probably doing now. The next step would be to establish accounts for every department, office, or region against which the firm’s accounting, human resources, or marketing and communications efforts can be charged. Then, you would have to demand accountability on the part of corporate services personnel to track their time, just as you do project staff. Like a cellular plan, if the cost of the corporate service effort exceeds the base allocation, the following month’s allocation would be adjusted proportionately. If it’s less, next month’s allocation would be reduced accordingly. The advantages are these: Departments, offices and regions basically only pay for what they use, and future budget allocations can be refined to reflect a base plan that is more reflective of actual usage, as opposed to simply payroll, labor billings, or gross revenues. Equally important, by tracking a firm’s accounting, human resources, or marketing and communications efforts, the managers of these services will be in a position to better know where their resources are being consumed, what type of efforts are being expended, and based on the performance of the department, office, or region to which they were expended, the effectiveness of their service. And, for those over-consumers of corporate services who have routinely swung for the fences because there was little or no cost in doing so, they’ll have to pay to play. MARC FLORIAN is vice president for Environmental Consulting & Technology, Inc., a professional consulting, engineering and scientific services organization. He can be reached at mflorian@ectinc.com.

the greater good of the organization. The question is, how does your firm’s process for administrating the allocation of overhead costs ensure equitability in the case of a habitual over-consumer; someone, some office or some region suspected of over spending as a means of bolstering their own stature or ego, literally at the expense of others? “If your firm is like most, there is always some office, some department, or some region that seems to use more than what they are paying for – whether it’s collections support, human resources support, or marketing and communications support.” THE CHALLENGE. In many firms, the budgeting and allocation of corporate overhead among departments, offices, and regions is based on payroll as a percentage of the total. Generally, however, that’s where the process ends. Unlike project staff, who are conditioned to account for their time and budgets, that’s rarely the case for a firm’s accounting, human resources, or marketing employees. Accordingly, there is no reliable means by which the expenditure of these efforts can be tracked and administrated across the organization on a monthly or even annual basis. Hence, there is no way of knowing how much or how little service is actually being consumed by a particular department, of- fice, or region. THE CELL PHONE ANALOGY. Think of your cell phone. Providers will sell you a plan that offers a fixed number of minutes and data usage. If you exceed the allotted amount, the pro- vider doesn’t turn off your phone, but they do assess you for the overage on next month’s bill. In the case of under

THE ZWEIG LETTER May 29, 2017, ISSUE 1202

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