TZL 1473 (web)

BUSINESS NEWS SUFFOLK DELIVERS STATE-OF-THE- ART BOSTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR COMPUTING & DATA SCIENCES IN STUNNING AND SUSTAINABLE ADDITION TO BOSTON SKYLINE Suffolk, one of the largest and most innovative real estate and construction enterprises in the country, successfully delivered the Boston University Center for Computing & Data Sciences. The 19-story, 345,000 square foot facility, which is the tallest building on Boston University’s urban Charles River campus, is the university’s most energy-efficient building and one of the most sustainable buildings in all of Massachusetts. “We are honored and privileged to deliver one of the most sustainable and sophisticated buildings to the Boston University campus and city of Boston,” said John Fish, chairman and CEO of Suffolk. “This iconic building is a striking addition to the Boston skyline and a tribute to the leadership and prestige of Boston University, the world- class stature of the city of Boston, the importance of sustainable design and construction, and the future of research and education.” The facility itself is designed with

intellectual collaboration in mind, featuring an all-glass interior that creates transparency and invites light deep into the building. The unique design of the structure, which is composed of a series of floorplates shifted and cantilevered around the building’s central core, creates a vertically stacked and staggered layout of “neighborhoods” for each academic discipline. The Boston University Center for Computing & Data Sciences building is the first of its kind on the school’s campus and in the City of Boston. This unique, complex and sustainable building is one hundred percent fossil fuel free due to a geothermal bore system installed by Suffolk. The Suffolk team drilled and installed 31 bores, each approximately 1,500 feet deep into the earth, or approximately twice as deep as the tallest structure in Boston is high. The bores harness the thermal resources of the earth to heat and cool the building without the need to connect to a gas line, putting Boston University ahead of schedule for Carbon Free Boston, the city’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal. The new facility also features triple- glazed windows that help contain heat

inside the building, beautifully designed staircases that reduce elevator use and promote energy reduction, and terraces and green roofs that offer stunning views and reduce the urban heat island effect. The new building will be home to Boston University’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences interdisciplinary academic unit, as well as a number of other departments and faculty members from throughout the University. Suffolk is a national enterprise that invests, innovates, and builds. Suffolk is an end-to-end business that provides value throughout the entire project lifecycle by leveraging its core construction management services with vertical service lines that include real estate capital investment, design, self-perform construction services, technology start- up investment and innovation research/ development. Suffolk is a national company with $5.0 billion in annual revenue, 2,500 employees and main offices in Boston, New York, Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Estero, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

or won’t pay in a timely manner, move into new geographical markets or client sectors, and ramp up your pipeline of job candidates. This allows the firm to be more profitable and the owners to make more money and build a much more valuable firm because it is growing rapidly. “I have seen this ‘over-marketing’ strategy work in every type of AEC or environmental firm, as well as all manner of other businesses that serve proven large, mature markets. It can’t be used sporadically. It has to be employed consistently over many years.” You think this is an impossible fantasy? Think again. I have seen this “over-marketing” strategy work in every type of AEC or environmental firm, as well as all manner of other businesses that serve proven large, mature markets. It can’t be used sporadically. It has to be employed consistently over many years. And it takes faith and a higher risk tolerance than many professionals have. Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

MARK ZWEIG, from page 11

thousand a piece annually – a good living by most standards. They have an 80-day average collection period, close to a million dollar book value, and their firm, if they wanted to sell it, is worth about $2 million. Now I want to paint a picture of what one could do with this business. Let’s just say for the sake of discussion they kick up their marketing expenditures by 5 or 6 percent of NSR. This will allow them to do original research on specific client types, publish their research and get it out to specialized media as well as present it at industry conferences, mail 30 postcards annually, post original content three times a day on LinkedIn, implement a real CRM and do the training required to get everyone using it, hold an over-the-top open house at their office annually, participate in four major trade shows a year, and more. Let’s say they over-market like this for 10 years in a row. If they did, I would not be surprised if they had a 250-person company doing $40 million or more in NSR, growing by 20 plus percent annually with higher than average labor multipliers, making a 20 percent profit. It would not shock me if their principals were earning seven figures annually and their business was worth $40 million or more. My point is this: Consistently over-marketing will allow you to grow faster, raise fees, shed clients that are hard to deal with

THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 23, 2023, ISSUE 1473

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