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BUSINESS NEWS CLARK CONSTRUCTION AND HKS BREAK GROUND ON FBI INNOVATION CENTER AT REDSTONE ARSENAL Clark Construction Group and HKS joined representatives from the FBI including its director Christopher Wray, the Alabama Congressional delegation, the United States Army, NASA, MDA, and the city of Huntsville to celebrate the groundbreaking of the FBI Innovation Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Clark-HKS is serving as the design-build team on the project. The Innovation Center is located at Redstone Arsenal where the FBI is building a 243-acre campus to strategically realign the Bureau, build its capabilities, enhance its training programs, and tap into top talent in the region. As the flagship building of the FBI’s new Science and Technology District at Redstone Arsenal, the 250,000-square-foot Innovation Center will be a first-of-its-kind facility dedicated to cyber threat intelligence, data analytics, and training to combat emerging threats. The three-story building will include collaborative office space, both formal and informal auditoriums, “collision spaces” for impromptu learning encounters, and specialized training spaces including a kinetic cyber range and a virtual reality classroom for agents to test and apply their skills and tools in real-world settings. “The Clark-HKS team is excited to be delivering such an important facility that will enhance the intelligence community’s capabilities to keep our country safe,” says Keith Couch, a senior vice president overseeing the design and construction efforts on the project. ”We look forward to not only supporting our national
security efforts, but also to contributing a project that is so important to the local Huntsville community.” “Just eight months after commencing design, we’re excited to see this project break ground,” says Jim Whitaker, principal-in-charge leading the design team. “I’m very proud of the immense collaboration of Clark, the FBI, and our design team to quickly and safely advance the design of this state-of-the-art facility in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The Clark-HKS team’s scope of work also includes a central utility plant, dining facilities, and an outdoor quad on the new Science and Technology District. The completion of the project is slated for 2023. Clark Construction Group, LLC, is one of the nation’s most experienced and respected providers of building and civil construction services companies. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, the company has offices strategically located to serve clients throughout the country. HKS is a team of more than 1,300 architects, interior designers, urban designers, scientists, artists, anthropologists, and other professionals working together across industries and across the globe to create places that delight, heal, and stimulate peak performance. The firm has nurtured a culture of extraordinary people with curious and creative minds who are passionate about delivering elegant solutions. HKS has a dedicated research team that digs deep to discover processes and ideas that improve outcomes for everyone.
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JAMIE CLAIRE KISER, from page 1
Chad Clinehens | Publisher cclinehens@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Senior Editor & Designer sparkman@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor czweig@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com
or training, which feels like a real risk to medium-term value. Instead, this is a good time to benchmark against revenue factor instead of utilization, to better tie the return on the labor dollar to efficiency evaluations that are more holistic than purely focusing on the number of hours billed. And, if we have to make nightmare deadlines work, don’t compromise the margin to do so. Time is so valuable; if clients want to jump to the front of the line, that must be of value to them. Your best clients will want you to retain the folks they enjoy working with and will join you in finding solutions if you bring them into the conversation – they are very likely dealing with extremely similar challenges too. Evaluate your fees and, if it is time to raise them, do so with confidence that being the lowest cost service provider is not as great of a market position to take as being the best partner to your clients. Your staff have so many more options – don’t burn them out or expect them to be eager to give up another night or weekend so a PM or principal can get something done on time without monetizing that objective. If your business does not resemble the above remarks, it is time to be viscerally aggressive in recruiting. Triple down on taking care of your colleagues – send firm- wide kudos, pay bonuses, hear out weird benefits, hand-write thank you notes, buy dinner if people are working late to hit a team deadline – celebrate relentlessly. Without talented teams, the incredible work our industry achieves would not be possible. JAMIE CLAIRE KISER is managing principal and director of advisory services at Zweig Group. Contact her at jkiser@zweiggroup.com.
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© Copyright 2021. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.
THE ZWEIG LETTER SEPTEMBER 13, 2021, ISSUE 1408
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