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BUSINESS NEWS SUNCOKE ENERGY AWARDS MAINTENANCE AND CAPITAL PROJECTS CONTRACT TO FLUOR Fluor Corporation announced that SunCoke Energy, Inc. has awarded Fluor a contract to provide certain maintenance support and capital project services at SunCoke coke facilities in the U.S. Fluor will book the undisclosed contract value in the first quarter of 2017. Under the five-year contract, Fluor will provide maintenance and capital project services at SunCoke’s U.S. domestic coke facilities, which produce high-quality coke for use in steelmaking. Fluor will transition onto the sites in early March 2017 and work alongside SunCoke employees. “With a detailed transition plan, we are partnering with SunCoke on a seamless transition to the sites with no disruption to current operations,” said Dale Barnard, vice president of North American maintenance, modification, and asset integrity operations for Fluor. “We will implement our asset performance management process and identify specific opportunities to reduce SunCoke’s total ownership costs.” AECOM AND WASHINGTON RIVER PROTECTION

SOLUTIONS WIN CAMPBELL INSTITUTE’S 2017 INNOVATION CHALLENGE AECOM , a premier, fully integrated global infrastructure firm, announced that together with Washington River Protection Solutions, an AECOM-led team, it has won the Campbell Institute’s 2017 Innovation Challenge for its Physiological Monitoring Program, which eliminated heat- stress disorders by adapting wearable technology for its remote field teams. The Innovation Challenge honors organizations for their achievement in the implementation of an innovative program that addresses specific environmental, health, and safety challenges. WRPS is responsible for the safe storage of 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste stored in underground tanks at the Hanford Site, a decommissioned nuclear production complex in Richland, Washington. Employees faced an elevated risk of heat stress by working remotely in heavy personal protection equipment on the project site, where summer temperatures average above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. To ensure an effective heat stress monitoring program, WRPS developed a chest-mounted device that remotely measures employees’ body temperature and heart rate.

The data is transmitted back in real time to a trained technician who uses it to monitor the employees for signs of heat stress. JACOBS JOINT VENTURE RECEIVES LETTER OF INTENT FROMOILSEARCHFORFACILITIES INPAPUA NEW GUINEA Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. , in a joint venture with Monadelphous Group Limited received a letter of intent from Oil Search Limited for a new proposed five year contract to provide engineering, procurement, and construction services for oil and gas production facilities in Papua New Guinea. The joint venture is expected to provide a wide range of brownfield project services, including engineering, procurement, civil, mechanical and electrical works on pipelines, utilities, facilities, and supporting infrastructure. “We expect to contribute significant value to this strategically important project by leveraging our previous experience in providing engineering services to Oil Search in Papua New Guinea,” said Jacobs Senior Vice President Andrew Berryman. “In particular, we recognize a key focus is to increase the efficiency of Oil Search’s brownfield project program through optimised constructability input during the design phase.”

WILL SCHNIER, from page 11

observe the trends over the period of several months. We share our accrual and cash basis income results. We share our accrued bonus pools. “We’re living in an age where information is real currency. It costs us nothing to spend that information freely for the benefit of our team members and our company.” We know that cash is king in a people-dominated business. We are a broker of man-hours, after all. So it’s critical to us that we share our liquidity status. Every month our people are updated on how much cash we have in the bank, how much money is owed to us through our accounts receivable, and how much money we owe other people, which is known as accounts payable. The measurement of liquidity for us is cash plus accounts receivable, less accounts payable. Finally, we share our project wins for the month. That information includes the client information, the project information, the project fee, and who was responsible for bringing it in. By sharing the breadwinners monthly with the entire team we are creating a healthy competition for our team members to be on that list and to have an impressive number of both wins and total new fees coming into the firm. We’re living in an age where information is real currency. It costs us nothing to spend that information freely for the benefit of our team members and our company. WILL SCHNIER is CEO of BIG RED DOG Engineering & Consulting. He can be reached at will.schnier@bigreddog.com.

benchmarking against the written plan, and they need to know it in as close to real time as we can manage. The information that we share in our open book management report to our team members is the same type of information that we provide to the owners of our firm. We’re unequivocal about sharing the information because if everybody has a sense of how we’re doing relative to our stated goals, then everybody can also take the appropriate actions to help the company perform better for our clients. An added benefit of our approach is that our engineers, planners, and designers, both new and those with significantly more experience, learn the metrics and terminology of what it takes to run a business. The metrics and information we’re sharing is providing some financial literacy to a group of folks that typically have never been trained to speak that language. “We’re unequivocal about sharing the information because if everybody has a sense of how we’re doing relative to our stated goals, then everybody can also take the appropriate actions to help the company perform better for our clients.” So what do we include in our monthly report to the entire staff? We share our revenue performance – what we billed for the previous month overall and our net service revenue. This is displayed in tabular and graphic form so they can

THE ZWEIG LETTER April 17, 2017, ISSUE 1196

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