TZL 1447

June 27, 2022, Issue 1447 WWW.ZWEIGGROUP.COM

TRENDLINES

Chargeability

It’s up to leadership to recognize entropic degradation in their firms and respond energetically to restore order. Organizational entropy

FIRM INDEX 1 Alliance Geomatics, LLC..............................4 Atlas Technical Consultants, Inc................4 Atwell, LLC.................................................................2 BRiC Partnership, LLC.....................................10 CRANSTON............................................................. 12 GAI Consultants.....................................................6 HFW Companies.................................................12 RTM Engineering Consultants..................10 Shear Structural...................................................10 MORE ARTICLES n KEYAN ZANDY: The wellness crisis Page 3 n Collaborative leadership: Anthony Morrocco Page 6 n MALORY ATKINSON: Your logo isn’t as cool as you think it is Page 9 n MARK ZWEIG: Vacation time Page 11 In Zweig Group’s 2022 Financial Performance Report of AEC Firms , chargeability is calculated among firm participants by dividing direct labor by total labor. Over the last couple of years, there has been a decrease in chargeability within the industry, down to 59 percent in the 2021 fiscal year. Looking further back, the industry norm for chargeability between 2012 and 2015 was about 58 percent, give or take 1 percent. Participate in a survey and save 50 percent on the final or pre- publication price of any Zweig Group research publication.

I n January a tweet about Claude Shannon’s equation for information entropy caught my attention. Remembering little about entropy, I dove in. Britannica defines entropy as “the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system.” The higher the entropy in a system, the greater its disorder. In closed thermodynamic systems, entropy increases with time. The system becomes more disordered unless and until some external source of energy restores order. The entropy of an AEC firm increases with time too. Its disorder increases and the amount of energy that is available for useful work decreases. In his book Leadership is an Art (which I recommend), author Max De Pree lists 20 signs of organizational entropy. Among them: ■ ■ A tendency toward superficiality ■ ■ A dark tension among key people ■ ■ No longer having time for celebration and ritual ■ ■ When people begin to have different understandings of words like “responsibility,” “service,” or “trust” ■ ■ When problem-makers outnumber problem-solvers ■ ■ When people speak of customers as impositions on their time rather than as opportunities to serve It’s up to a firm’s leaders to recognize entropic degradation in their firms and respond energetically to restore order and increase the organization’s capacity to be useful. Claude Shannon’s entropy equation dealt with information theory – a field he pioneered. Information theory – broadly – deals with transmitting information across a noisy channel. According to Wikipedia, “The core idea of information theory is that the ‘informational value’ of a communicated message depends on the

Tom Godin

See TOM GODIN, page 2

THE VOICE OF REASON FOR THE AEC INDUSTRY

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ON THE MOVE ATWELL’S MESA OFFICE HIRES BAIRD FULLERTON, P.E. AS TEAM LEADER Atwell, LLC welcomes Baird Fullerton to its team as team leader in its real estate and land development division. Based in Atwell’s Mesa, Arizona office, Baird will be responsible for assisting clients with a wide range of project types, training, guiding and supervising his team members to achieve successful project outcomes, assisting with the completion of high-quality design documents with his comprehensive understanding of development requirements, and leading business development efforts and client relationships for Atwell’s real estate and land development market. Baird’s career spans more than 30 years managing a wide variety of project types in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. He has provided design services for residential, commercial, educational, and municipal clients. This includes master- planned communities, apartments, and commercial developments such as the mixed-use portion of Fashion Place Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona, campus development for Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, and public utility and roadway improvements for Glendale, Scottsdale,

Mesa, Phoenix, Peoria, and Buckeye. He is familiar with agency requirements and excels at identifying critical path items to accelerate project delivery. Baird earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering degree at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Arizona and a LEED Accredited Professional. He has been a self-certified professional with the city of Phoenix since the program’s inception and is able to bypass the plan review process for commercial projects. “Baird’s background and experience in residential, commercial, and municipal projects in the southwest partnered with his ability to train and mentor staff will make him a great addition to our team,” said Atwell Vice President Mark Borushko. Atwell, LLC is a national consulting, engineering, and construction services firm with technical professionals located across the country. Atwell provides comprehensive turnkey services including land and right-of-way support, planning, landscape architecture, engineering, land surveying, environmental compliance and permitting, and project and program management.

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TOM GODIN , from page 1

degree to which the content of the message is surprising. If a highly likely event occurs, the message carries very little information. On the other hand, if a highly unlikely event occurs, the message is much more informative.” Rare information – or information that describes a low probability or unexpected event – has more Shannon entropy. Messages of these types require more bits of encoding – more energy – to make it through a noisy channel. So, what? Put practically, if you need to communicate something with high Shannon entropy, you need t0 put time and effort toward making sure the message doesn’t get corrupted by noise. One of the best ways you can do this is to send the message yourself and directly to the people who need it. And don’t be surprised (or disappointed) that you need to send that message a few times. Be aware of entropy in your firm and in your communications! Leadership is a high contact activity. Correspondingly high energy levels are required. Tom Godin is a strategic planning advisor at Zweig Group. Contact him at tgodin@ zweiggroup.com.

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THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 27, 2022, ISSUE 1447

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OPINION

The wellness crisis

It is up to us to do what we can to improve our employees’ mental and physical health, as well as our own.

F or most of us in the construction industry, when we think of health and wellness, we think about safety on the job site and how important it is to protect our workers from the fatal four: falls, electrocution, struck by objects, and caught between. But what actually harms people on a much larger scale is less frequently contemplated or discussed: wellness of the mind and body.

Keyan Zandy

A National Survey on Drug Use and Health puts construction at the top of all industries for drug and alcohol abuse. Their >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12

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