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BUSINESS NEWS AECOM JOINT VENTURE APPOINTED BY AUSTRALIA’S SUNWATER AS ENGINEERING AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES PARTNER AECOM, the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm, announced that Sunwater has appointed an AECOM joint venture as Engineering and Professional Services Partner for the Queensland, Australia bulk water service provider. Sunwater’s dams and pipeline delivers around 40 percent of the water used commercially in Queensland – more than 1.3 million megaliters a year. As part of the Prosperity joint venture with Jacobs, AECOM will support Sunwater in achieving strategic goals and operational objectives through a long-term sole partner arrangement that will enable meaningful collaboration and expand Sunwater’s capacity and capability to

meet current and future demand for engineering and professional services. “Sunwater has a proud legacy of delivering bulk water infrastructure for Queensland’s agricultural, urban, and industrial customers for over 80 years, and we are honored to expand our partnership to help develop and deliver its pipeline of major infrastructure projects,” said Mark McManamny, chief executive of AECOM’s Australia and New Zealand region. “AECOM has a rich history of collaboration with Sunwater and, as the joint venture named as the sole Engineering and Professional Services Provider, our technical specialists will draw on our deep experience in delivering complex programs to unlock the benefits of a longer-term program management approach.”

“To successfully deliver a substantial and complex capital works program, Sunwater needs to work with the industry’s best,” said Sunwater CEO Glenn Stockton. “Our partnership with the Prosperity joint venture will provide the additional skills and capabilities our workforce needs to ensure we continue to build, operate, and maintain water infrastructure assets critical to Queensland’s economy.” Sunwater, a statutory Queensland Government-owned corporation, owns AUD$13.7B in assets and operate 31 Bulk Water and Irrigation Supply schemes and 14 pipelines that extend from the lower Mary River, north of Gympie to Mareeba in far north Queensland, south-west of the State from Toowoomba to St George and north-west almost to Cloncurry.

in a retirement facility and donated more than $15 million to various charitable causes in the last few years. It was a good time to make them an offer that reflected the time on market and condition of the house, so we did and we bought it. Over the last seven weeks we have done a significant renovation of the place. We got so much done in such a short time in spite of shortages of good subs here even I am impressed with it myself. Sourcing everything ourselves, scheduling everyone carefully, and being there every day to get the quality we wanted has been very gratifying for both my wife and myself. And we have been doing physical work every single day, from putting stuff together to laying carpeting to hanging wallpaper and blinds and cutting up boxes. On top of it is the grueling chore of moving out of a 4,000-square- foot place with 7,000 square feet of stuff in its garages, sheds, attics, and basements. Every day my wife and I are completely exhausted but also happy to be back in the game. We are both losing weight in spite of eating out every night. Being back in the phase of doing something where you can see the progress of your efforts every day has been very gratifying. While we all have our big long-term company- building projects that preoccupy our daily thinking, it’s good to have something more tangible to work on for a change. And while I am not as good at multi-tasking as I once was, I can still keep it all together and keep all those other plates spinning in the air while we get this effort wrapped up. I recently turned 66. I’m in pretty good shape for a person my age, but there’s not as much gas in the tank as there once was. That said, one thing I know is we all need new challenges, variety in our daily routines, and to see tangible results from our efforts to be fulfilled. Just gratifying yourself with vacations and new cars and dinners out is not where it’s “at.” It’s getting stuff done that really makes us happy. It’s a basic human need and one we should not ignore or repress. Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.

MARK ZWEIG, from page 5

just weren’t performing like they once did. Everything took too much supervision and I didn’t have the time for it. So we decided to start phasing out of the business. We finished up our projects. We sold off our rental properties one by one. We didn’t replace workers who left. We paid a ton of taxes because we didn’t reinvest in real estate. Over a period of years we got out of everything. We sold the last building – a 21,000-square- foot multi-tenant center – a couple months ago. And even though we are carrying the note on it for the next two years, we don’t have to worry about it at this point. That was the last asset owned by Mark Zweig, Inc. So that brings us to the present. We currently live in a mostly original 124-year-old Victorian house on a 1.1 acre lot in town. It was a largely original house we bought in November of 2021 and did a quick rehab on and moved into. My wife wanted to live closer in and we left a fantastic modern house about four miles away for this one. We did a lot of work on it but did not bring it up to the standard of what we used to do. It was too original and had too much character to completely gut it. We built a new garage with a gym and bathroom and made it look fantastic. And we carved off a .47 acre corner lot that could be easily built on. But I always felt it would not be the house I wanted to stay in forever. We got a great deal on it and our work created a lot of value. So I started looking around casually for something else, hoping I could sell my wife on it if I found a deal. One thing I have learned about real estate over the years is to look at Zillow every morning, first thing. This is how you know what is selling and how much it is selling for. In real estate, you make money when you are buying, and you make money when you are selling. We always bought properties either the day they hit the market or after they languished on the market for a year or two. The house we bought recently was in the latter category. A giant mid-century modern house with two later Marlon Blackwell-designed additions 3/4 mile away had been on the market for a long time. The original owners were

THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 1, 2024, ISSUE 1531

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