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BUSINESS NEWS NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AWARDS JACOBS INSPECTION SERVICES CONTRACT Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. received a contract from the New Jersey Department of Transportation to provide construction inspection services for the Smart Moves 2015 – North program. The NJDOT’s Smart Moves program consists of developing, implementing, monitoring, and promoting alternative travel options and intermodal connections. The program will use a network of cameras to identify incidents and deploy emergency services to alert motorists of changes in driving patterns. Under the terms of the contract Jacobs is overseeing inspection work in Newark; the townships of Clinton, Parsippany – Troy Hills, and West Milford; and the counties of Essex, Hunterdon, Morris, and Passaic, New Jersey. “The Smart Moves program is utilizing the latest technology to provide an effective traffic information and alert service for commuters,”

joint venture fabrication yard near Edmonton, Alberta. Engineering and construction personnel were integrated into the fabrication teams to support construction-driven execution through the phases and the 95 modules were fabricated and shipped in 10 months. “This milestone was achieved on schedule and on budget using Fluor’s integrated engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction approach to clients’ projects,” said Mark Fields, president of Fluor’s Energy & Chemicals business in the Americas region. “Fluor worked in collaboration with Suncor – the groups were closely aligned on fabrication priorities and module placement dates.” The East Tank Farm Development, which will be a Suncor-operated midstream asset, is currently under construction in the Wood Buffalo Region of Alberta. The facility will consist of bitumen storage, blending and cooling facilities and connectivity to third-party pipelines.

said Jacobs Senior Vice President Buildings and Infrastructure Randy Pierce. “We look forward to contributing our expertise to this important project, which is built on many years of experience in developing transport infrastructure networks and related systems around the world.” The Smart Moves project began construction in October 2016 and is expected to be complete by March 2018. FLUOR PLACES FINAL MODULE FOR SUNCOR EAST TANK FARM DEVELOPMENT PROJECT Fluor Corporation announced it has placed the final module for the Suncor Energy Oil Sands Limited Partnership’s East Tank Farm Development project near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. As part of its engineering, procurement, fabrication, and construction scope, Fluor managed module fabrication and shipment of the modules, all of which were fabricated by Fluor’s Supreme Modular Fabrication Inc.

BERNIE SIBEN, from page 11

planning ourselves, how can we trust its completeness and accuracy?” So they blew the entire agreed-to project budget redoing the planning phase, despite the owner’s instruction not to do that. “Don’t think of it as the owner not being smart enough to do the work themselves. Think of it as the owner being smart enough to come to you for help in the first place.” For many years, the organization chart in the proposal showed the owner/client in the top box, but upon selection, that box seemed to disappear. More recently, we are learning that successful projects keep the owner/client as an active and contributing member of the project team. This ensures that there are no surprises for the owner and that all of his/her newly-arising concerns are addressed as soon as possible. An important way to show the owner (your client) that you value the contribution they make to your firm’s success is to allow them to function in their proper project role, treating their ideas, their words, their sketches, their questions as having great value to defining and refining the project, your role, and the criteria by which your work will be judged. Don’t think of it as the owner not being smart enough to do the work themselves. Think of it as the owner being smart enough to come to you for help in the first place. BERNIE SIBEN, CPSM, is owner and principal consultant with the Siben Consult, LLC , an independent A/E marketing and strategic consultant located in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at siben@ sibenconsult.com.

In either case, the owner will be the one making the final decision(s). The project is, after all, their project. Even if your firm is hired to help with the earliest planning phase of the project – the site selection, fatal flaw studies, permitting, facility planning, land/ROW/easement acquisition – you will only make preliminary and/or final recommendations. Every final decision will ultimately be made by the owner. From my perspective, a major part of the problem involves a kind of professional arrogance based on the assumed importance of the consultant’s knowledge. After all, you are the expert to whom the owner has come for help. Under those circumstances, it can be difficult to remember that, even if the owner agrees with all your recommendations, the decisions are still only yours to recommend – they are theirs to make. I have seen a fast-growing 300-person regional A/E firm get fired from a large land development project because its project manager was so busy telling the owner what he should want that he never heard when the owner told him what he really wanted. I have also seen a 1,000-person national A/E firm get fired from a project to design a branch bank because they didn’t want to accept the facility planning work done by another firm. Their attitude was, “If we didn’t do the “It can be difficult to remember that, even if the owner agrees with all your recommendations, the decisions are still only yours to recommend – they are theirs to make.”

THE ZWEIG LETTER February 6, 2017, ISSUE 1186

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