I haven’t been posting here quite as frequently as I would like, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been lazy!
The Zweig Letter
A few weeks ago, I received a call from Julie Kyle, an editor with The Zweig Letter. For those of you not familiar with the publication or the organization behind it, ZweigWhite is perhaps the number one consulting resource for architecture, engineering and planning professionals. Their weekly newsletter is read by many top professionals in the design world, due to the incredible value that Mark Zweig and his team offer. The reason Ms. Kyle contacted me was to see if I could provide some insight into the role of forensics in green building. My colleagues, Bruce Bergman and Victor Dominelli collaborated with me on an article that Kyle wove together masterfully. The result is a series of articles about risk management for sustainable and high performance building design.
As a surprise, Ms. Kyle had also been in contact with Ed Martinet, of LiMa Solutions, Inc., whom I had also recently interviewed. Martinet illustrated how his firm’s Value-Engineered Alternative Dispute Resolution process might benefit disputes involving green building. Here is a quote from the article:
Hill says in order for higher performance design and construction to succeed in the marketplace, especially in light of current economic conditions, disputes must be handled in an expedient and cost-effective manner. If all parties “can accept the possibility of taking a value-engineered approach to dispute resolution of green building performance issues, perhaps we will be able to keep more projects out of the court room and continue to drive innovation.
You can purchase a copy of the entire issue or just that article, “Testing the limits of green construction,” at ZweigWhite’s website. I cannot recommend enough how valuable this publication is for professionals in architecture, engineering and planning.
Construction Marketing Ideas
One of my favorite construction marketing professionals, Mark Buckshon, is the president of the Construction News and Report Group of Companies. He also publishes an incredibly rich resource in the form of his blog, Construction Marketing Ideas, and a book by the same name.
In Mark’s latest post, More from less: Hourly or “value” pricing, he responds to some posts I’ve made recently. In summary, while he took exception to a comment I made about advertising (a core facet of his business), he demonstrates a real-world example of the advantage that value-based pricing has over charging fees based on units of time. He outsourced some of his work to a very competent independent contractor, freeing up time that he can now devote to steering his company to continued success. Everyone wins.
Other News
If all goes well, I may be taking on additional publishing responsibilities on behalf of a local nonprofit organization that I am now involved with. I’ll let you know once that becomes official…
AEC Forensics 