1215

TRANSACT IONS ARCADIS ACQUIRES E2 MANAGETECH Arcadis , the leading global design and consultancy firm for natural and built assets, announced the acquisition of E2 ManageTech , the preeminent enterprise technology solutions firm providing information technology and business services for the environmental, health and safety information market. E2, headquartered in Chicago, was established in 1998 and employs 55 people in the United States and Canada. “Our clients around the world are facing challenging environmental compliance, health and safety, and sustainability requirements and are looking to enterprise technology solutions to better manage their risk,

compliance, and governance programs,” says Mary Ann Hopkins, Arcadis executive board member. “Through this acquisition, Arcadis clients will benefit from E2’s extensive advisory, deployment and EHS software experience.” Development of industry-focused EHS strategies that include the selection, implementation and maintenance of enterprise technology solutions is a rapidly growing market segment. Capturing this segment strengthens Arcadis’ capabilities and deepens its resources to support the growing market demand in North America and globally.

“Over the past 19 years, E2 has built a strong reputation working with multi-national clients to meet their strategic health and safety and sustainability objectives through enterprise technology solutions,” says Vijay Gudivaka, E2’s chief executive officer. “We are excited to join Arcadis, combining resources and meeting the needs of companies across the globe.” Gudivaka will lead Arcadis’ North American and global enterprise technology solutions practice for environmental, health and safety, and sustainability.

2) Ray Anderson, then the CEO of Interface Carpet, wrote a wonderful book titled Business Lessons from a Radical Indus- trialist . The subtitle is, How a CEO Doubled Earnings, Inspired Employees and Created Innovation from One Simple Idea . The simple idea? We must be completely sustainable for our planet to survive and be a place I’m proud to have left to my grandchildren. 3) Our West 2nd District project here in Reno, a high desert and very dry environment, will have its own waste treatment/wa- ter recycling system, using 50 percent of the water a conven- tional building here would use. We’re building a central heat- ing and cooling plant that will reduce energy in the district according to our current projection by 34 percent. We’ll also have several photovoltaic panel arrays, and we’re exploring generating electricity from vision glass. I was the champion of sustainability at Gensler for many years. We made believers of our colleagues and our clients as we created proof statements about the value of what we were doing. In most cases, the cost was lower to start, and the long-term operational savings were impressive. And all of this is without a Paris Climate Agreement, a carbon tax on top of complex rules and regulations. People are doing these things because of public education and peer pressure. Invigorated by the great American Spirit, people are doing this “because it’s the right thing to do, not because someone is shoving it down my throat.” I challenge you to get out there and publicize your success stories and those of others. Spend more time leading and guiding others to embrace what you’re learning. I believe this will be 10 times more effective than any rule generated by the Paris Climate Agreement. ED FRIEDRICHS, FAIA, FIIDA, is a consultant with Zweig Group and the former CEO and president of Gensler. Contact him at efriedrichs@ zweiggroup.com. “Spend more time leading and guiding others to embrace what you’re learning. I believe this will be 10 times more effective than any rule generated by the Paris Climate Agreement.”

ED FRIEDRICHS, from page 11

there’s so much more to it than CO2 in the atmosphere. Our concern and response regarding our planet must include elimination of toxins in the environment and the development of renewable energy sources being realized in the advances in solar and wind energy. In Nevada, NV Energy, for example, is now able to build a solar power generation array, and they’re doing it at a lower cost per kilowatt hour than a gas-fired turbine. Many wind generators in the United States are producing power below the cost of more conventional oil, gas, or coal plants. Material conservation and recycling are big considerations. Let’s face it, there’s only a limited supply of petroleum, aluminum, steel, copper, zinc, and many other substances, so recycling has become a strong mandate. “There’s been pressure from prospective employees, relentlessly quizzing companies about their environmental programs, as well as customer/client pressures about an enterprise’s environmental approach to the manufacture of their products.” The U.S. Green Building Council, with their LEED certification programs – along with Energy Star and other metrics that provide tools to the design and construction industries – have done much to help us respond to our serious concern for conservation. And there’s competition in the market to build net zero energy buildings, as well as other such programs, throughout the country. Together, we’re doing this through public awareness and increasing peer pressure, which is much more effective than making rules and demanding adherence. I contend we should spend more time searching out and elevating those who truly embrace the objectives of reducing the use of complex hydrocarbons and toxic materials, and weeding out those who can’t or won’t. Here are some examples: 1) BP has renamed itself “Beyond Petroleum.” And that’s not just a carefully-crafted marketing line. BP is a major wind-energy producer and, for a while, they were manufacturing photovol- taic panels, the first batch of which went onto my house in San Francisco in 2001.

THE ZWEIG LETTER September 11, 2017, ISSUE 1215

Made with FlippingBook Annual report