अनुलिपि 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:06.663 --> 00:00:11.493
A big thank you to Autodesk, the sponsor of Engineering Influence at this year's convention.
00:00:12.050 --> 00:00:17.280
Autodesk partners with the AEC industry and its leaders to shape a more connected,
00:00:17.698 --> 00:00:22.841
data-driven future, empowering engineers to work more intelligently and to make
00:00:22.841 --> 00:00:25.541
confident decisions to drive meaningful impact.
00:00:25.883 --> 00:00:30.144
This enables firms to evolve, stay competitive, and deliver stronger business
00:00:30.487 --> 00:00:33.430
outcomes, all while designing a better world.
00:00:33.621 --> 00:00:35.549
So thank you again to Autodesk.
00:00:36.036 --> 00:00:39.461
Welcome to the Engineering Influence Podcast from the American Council of Engineering
00:00:39.461 --> 00:00:44.390
Companies coming to you from our 2026 Convention and Legislative Summit in Washington, D.C.
00:00:44.819 --> 00:00:48.901
And I'm very pleased to be joined on the program today by Chad Klinens,
00:00:48.901 --> 00:00:52.408
the CEO of Zweig Group. Chad, thank you very much for joining us.
00:00:52.576 --> 00:00:53.711
It's great to be here. Thank you.
00:00:54.031 --> 00:00:58.691
So tell us a little bit about yourself, Zweig Group, how you've kind of gone
00:00:58.691 --> 00:01:02.759
from the engineering side into the business side of the industry. Sure.
00:01:03.148 --> 00:01:06.401
Well, it's kind of neat. This morning, right before the opening session,
00:01:06.401 --> 00:01:12.571
I ran into a guy that was on the very first day of my very first job 32 years
00:01:12.571 --> 00:01:15.962
ago in the engineering industry. So that's the neat thing about these events.
00:01:16.333 --> 00:01:18.601
It brings people back. Brings everybody back together. Yeah.
00:01:18.911 --> 00:01:24.125
So 32 years of experience in what I would call AEC. I'm a civil engineer. Mm-hmm.
00:01:24.706 --> 00:01:31.084
And so I spent the first 18 years starting in kind of heavy infrastructure design,
00:01:31.374 --> 00:01:37.912
but really got into strategy and marketing brand strategy, growth strategy, as soon as I can.
00:01:37.912 --> 00:01:40.532
I always loved the business side of the profession.
00:01:41.055 --> 00:01:46.652
And that ultimately led me to 14 years ago joining Zwei Group.
00:01:47.300 --> 00:01:51.332
And I knew a lot about Zwei Group as a recognized brand in the industry.
00:01:51.692 --> 00:01:55.662
The founder had moved to my hometown. Oh, there you go. Convenient.
00:01:55.662 --> 00:01:59.395
Yeah, yeah. You know, the company was started in Boston in 1988,
00:01:59.952 --> 00:02:04.272
moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, the university there.
00:02:04.712 --> 00:02:09.492
And so 14 years ago, started talking to him and one thing led to another.
00:02:09.492 --> 00:02:15.165
Ended up moving back to my hometown and helping write the second chapter of Zweig Group.
00:02:15.693 --> 00:02:19.072
That's a great, I mean, that is fantastic. I mean, just the fact you were able
00:02:19.072 --> 00:02:21.692
to go kind of full circle and kind of come back to your hometown.
00:02:22.532 --> 00:02:26.932
Yeah. What was the thing that really sparked the idea about going into more
00:02:26.932 --> 00:02:32.502
of the business development and marketing side of it from the strict civil engineering side?
00:02:32.502 --> 00:02:38.239
What kind of what was the first spark and opportunity that allowed you to kind of go in that direction?
00:02:38.888 --> 00:02:43.310
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think it was really just,
00:02:43.782 --> 00:02:47.890
I've always been observant, like the business side, the people side,
00:02:49.100 --> 00:02:53.460
and was just inspired by kind of the everything else, right,
00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:55.298
of an engineering career.
00:02:55.750 --> 00:03:00.480
And so I've described this in some of the marketing audiences.
00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:04.950
I said I had to kind of claw my way into marketing, but loved the brand,
00:03:04.950 --> 00:03:08.715
building a brand, a company that people were attracted to.
00:03:09.150 --> 00:03:15.260
And so that was really the spark that probably happened in the early 2000s,
00:03:15.260 --> 00:03:17.080
you know, early in my career. Yeah.
00:03:17.540 --> 00:03:24.052
I had a tremendous mentor with the firm that I grew up in, essentially spent 14 years at.
00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:30.010
And I'll just mention him because I think it's really important because he helped
00:03:30.010 --> 00:03:35.809
inspire what became the mission statement of Zwei Group, which is Elevate the Industry.
00:03:36.313 --> 00:03:41.900
And it was actually, I remember it vividly, it was a luncheon that we would
00:03:41.900 --> 00:03:49.570
do typically late in May after we would welcome the new graduates of engineers
00:03:49.570 --> 00:03:50.557
to our engineering firm.
00:03:51.102 --> 00:03:53.840
And, you know, he just said in front of everybody, he goes, you know,
00:03:54.160 --> 00:03:57.730
they don't make TV shows and movies
00:03:57.730 --> 00:04:03.800
about engineers like they do ERs and doctors and all of those things.
00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:08.446
He said, but what we do is so critical and important to the world. Yeah.
00:04:08.817 --> 00:04:13.692
And it was that statement that about eight years later...
00:04:14.308 --> 00:04:17.644
I was thinking, okay, what do we want to do as an organization?
00:04:18.215 --> 00:04:23.704
Elevate the industry, right? Like make it more attractive to kids coming out
00:04:23.704 --> 00:04:26.994
of school. And that's what I love about the alignment between our mission and
00:04:26.994 --> 00:04:29.663
what ACEC does and why it's so important for us to be here.
00:04:30.040 --> 00:04:33.684
Yeah, and that's a good transition point because really what we've done is,
00:04:34.204 --> 00:04:38.494
especially through the institute, the ACEC Research Institute and ACEC also,
00:04:38.494 -->
Load full transcript
00:04:42.174
is just try to work on how do we elevate the industry?
00:04:42.174 --> 00:04:47.464
How do we encourage firms to develop the systems and the processes,
00:04:47.464 --> 00:04:52.364
the policies that encourage the next generation of engineers to join the workforce
00:04:52.724 --> 00:04:56.452
and also to give more people a voice at the table?
00:04:56.620 --> 00:05:00.304
Right. Right. And I think that that was really the impetus behind really the
00:05:00.304 --> 00:05:03.934
community building roadmap, which is something that's been going on for a couple of years now.
00:05:03.934 --> 00:05:07.266
Now, for anybody out there who's not completely familiar with that,
00:05:07.794 --> 00:05:11.924
kind of give us a description of what that is and how that fits in with what you're doing with AC.
00:05:12.869 --> 00:05:17.904
Yeah, so I want to describe the community roadmap in a little bit of a different
00:05:17.904 --> 00:05:21.514
way, because anybody that's listening to this podcast can go look it up.
00:05:21.514 --> 00:05:24.554
Certainly, it's a benchmarking platform, right?
00:05:24.937 --> 00:05:31.084
Now, it's changed names, or I guess maybe it's evolved over the years, was the DEI plus B.
00:05:32.195 --> 00:05:37.141
Roadmap, evolved to the community roadmap, but essentially it is a data collection
00:05:37.553 --> 00:05:42.992
and then insights delivery platform, something that we know well at Zwei Group,
00:05:42.992 --> 00:05:46.557
our founder helped pioneer that a long, long time ago.
00:05:47.067 --> 00:05:51.990
And so I think what's really important is this profession loves data, right?
00:05:52.292 --> 00:05:55.322
When we have data, then we can do something about it.
00:05:55.769 --> 00:05:59.229
But the key is we have to do something about it. Yes.
00:05:59.461 --> 00:06:06.746
So data by itself doesn't really help us unless we do something with it to drive actionable change.
00:06:07.205 --> 00:06:11.882
And that's the one thing that I really loved about this platform when I was
00:06:11.882 --> 00:06:17.682
first introduced to it years ago is that it has the word roadmap in it, right?
00:06:18.362 --> 00:06:22.162
So essentially it communicates it to journey, starting point,
00:06:22.162 --> 00:06:24.811
and you're going someplace better. Yeah.
00:06:25.404 --> 00:06:28.952
I think that's important because it is a benchmarking tool.
00:06:28.952 --> 00:06:33.669
It allows you to kind of take, as a firm, a hard look at what you offer from.
00:06:35.102 --> 00:06:41.782
A perspective of bringing a more diverse workforce into your form or seeing
00:06:41.782 --> 00:06:43.336
exactly where you stand at the moment.
00:06:43.760 --> 00:06:47.182
Ask those questions, but then also collect the data set to actually start looking
00:06:47.182 --> 00:06:54.212
at how you are in, not just in the industry, but also in your size of a firm
00:06:54.212 --> 00:06:56.282
and kind of where you are in the marketplace.
00:06:56.722 --> 00:06:59.003
And then set those metrics to actually move forward.
00:06:59.497 --> 00:07:04.232
Well, and that's key. And I'll say that that's one of the things that attracted
00:07:04.232 --> 00:07:09.052
me to join Mark Zweig 14 years ago is that, you know, if you go back to the
00:07:09.052 --> 00:07:14.256
late 80s, you know, Zweig Group, and of course then it was known as Swag White, but,
00:07:15.533 --> 00:07:24.880
There really wasn't a resource that was dedicated to just architecture and engineering firms.
00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:27.583
I mean, there were several, but we were one of the first that really,
00:07:27.885 --> 00:07:30.671
I would say, pioneered giving data,
00:07:31.590 --> 00:07:35.710
and the detail to, like, for instance, a 70-person engineering firm in Denver,
00:07:35.710 --> 00:07:42.077
Colorado could find data and say, well, is the exact work I do in the exact market, am I.
00:07:43.390 --> 00:07:45.710
High profit? Am I low profit? Yeah. Am I growing?
00:07:46.605 --> 00:07:50.690
Am I stagnant? You know, and I think those benchmarks are very important.
00:07:50.690 --> 00:07:56.080
So you fast forward to today and beyond financial metrics, and those things
00:07:56.080 --> 00:07:57.338
are all very important, right?
00:07:58.063 --> 00:08:03.056
But we have a lot more insights on, like, the employee experience,
00:08:03.473 --> 00:08:05.376
which this platform does a great job of.
00:08:05.376 --> 00:08:08.501
And in a tight labor market where everybody's competing for talent,
00:08:08.628 --> 00:08:11.746
and it's a very, very tight pipeline, which we're trying to fix.
00:08:11.746 --> 00:08:14.756
But for right now, if you're trying to get talent, you have to make sure that
00:08:14.756 --> 00:08:18.286
you're differentiating yourself from the competition to actually attract and
00:08:18.286 --> 00:08:19.907
then retain that talent when it gets there. Right.
00:08:20.906 --> 00:08:25.396
And there are a lot of questions and things that C-suite needs to take into
00:08:25.396 --> 00:08:26.666
consideration to actually create
00:08:26.666 --> 00:08:30.129
the environment that allows you to be successful in tallying position.
00:08:30.518 --> 00:08:34.726
Right. What are you seeing in the numbers? I mean, what's sticking out to you
00:08:34.726 --> 00:08:37.706
most in the recent results from Q2?
00:08:38.374 --> 00:08:43.705
Well, a couple of things. And, you know, first of all, let's just acknowledge
00:08:43.861 --> 00:08:47.026
that there's been headwinds. Oh, of course. Yeah. A lot.
00:08:48.126 --> 00:08:51.626
Unexpected headwinds that, yeah, that we didn't really take into consideration
00:08:52.046 --> 00:08:56.655
at the outset of the roadmap. Yeah. And so I will say what's encouraging is
00:08:56.986 --> 00:08:58.995
engagement is still high in the platform.
00:08:59.552 --> 00:09:02.866
And in fact, you're seeing some progression, right?
00:09:02.866 --> 00:09:06.896
So you can tell that
some of those firms that have maybe taken it a couple of
00:09:06.896 --> 00:09:13.446
times, they're now progressing and maybe moving from aspiring to emerging or something.
00:09:13.446 --> 00:09:18.106
And there's still a lot that are kind of clustered in those early, early categories.
00:09:18.106 --> 00:09:21.856
But of course, it's sometime that the goal is to optimize, right?
00:09:21.856 --> 00:09:27.216
That's the journey that firms are trying to get to. So I would say two things,
00:09:27.216 --> 00:09:30.407
engagement and progress. Yeah, that's good.
00:09:30.564 --> 00:09:35.266
Yeah. Now, I guess from the perspective of the firms that haven't,
00:09:35.858 --> 00:09:39.434
taken the path on the roadmap, haven't taken part in the roadmap,
00:09:39.812 --> 00:09:43.736
you know, what would you tell them as far as the elevator pitch on why they
00:09:43.736 --> 00:09:47.666
should take the time and effort to actually get them on the path of the roadmap,
00:09:47.666 --> 00:09:50.028
start collecting data, and then start benchmarking?
00:09:50.301 --> 00:09:55.676
Yeah, well, it'll go back to really, I think, if we just define what it is.
00:09:55.676 --> 00:10:02.839
And again, let's forget all the noise that has been created around this effort.
00:10:03.077 --> 00:10:05.596
And let's talk about what it is at its core.
00:10:06.276 --> 00:10:10.142
It is a recruiting and retention tool, right?
00:10:10.386 --> 00:10:14.006
I mean, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to maximize recruitment
00:10:14.006 --> 00:10:17.571
and retention to this industry. That's what elevate the industry.
00:10:18.018 --> 00:10:22.176
At its core, it's a recruiting retention, right? We want to attract people to
00:10:22.176 --> 00:10:25.065
the industry, help solve the workforce problems.
00:10:25.385 --> 00:10:30.996
That's exactly what this tool does. It gives data to a firm to say, here's where we are.
00:10:31.836 --> 00:10:38.856
And again, that by itself isn't what it's all about. It's taking that and saying,
00:10:38.856 --> 00:10:41.416
okay, how do we work this into our strategic plan?
00:10:42.462 --> 00:10:48.676
How do we work this into our recruiting messaging, into our marketing client messaging?
00:10:49.236 --> 00:10:51.636
But not only that, just how do we bring it to light?
00:10:52.296 --> 00:10:58.396
Where there's actual processes and structure where the business model actually
00:10:58.396 --> 00:11:01.496
evolves in response to the data that we're getting.
00:11:01.496 --> 00:11:04.386
Yeah. And again, it's taking the politics out of the situation.
00:11:04.386 --> 00:11:08.323
That's right. It's noise. It's unnecessary. It's a business decision.
00:11:08.451 --> 00:11:10.016
Right. It's a question of we have
00:11:10.016 --> 00:11:13.024
to compete for the same talent pool that everybody else is competing in.
00:11:13.210 --> 00:11:17.346
Right. The talent pool requires or demands certain things. Is the firm set up
00:11:17.346 --> 00:11:20.326
to actually meet those demands? Can we get to talent?
00:11:20.797 --> 00:11:23.931
What do we have to do to get talent, retain it, and grow it?
00:11:24.367 --> 00:11:27.096
This is an actual roadmap that allows you to put yourself on that,
00:11:27.731 --> 00:11:31.526
path towards figuring out exactly what goes into your point i mean this is not
00:11:31.526 --> 00:11:36.106
a a one and done thing this is this is information that can inform a strategic
00:11:36.106 --> 00:11:40.274
plan strategic investments uh where the firm is going to be going into the future,
00:11:40.901 --> 00:11:45.996
well and you know i think it's interesting as we we sit here in dc and and we're
00:11:46.416 --> 00:11:50.876
we're you know halfway through the day here on monday yeah all of the talk about
00:11:50.876 --> 00:11:52.899
AI technology innovation, right?
00:11:53.276 --> 00:12:00.016
So, but what that highlights is the competition for, like for myself, civil engineer.
00:12:00.576 --> 00:12:03.936
You go back to when I graduated, you know, what did you do?
00:12:04.496 --> 00:12:08.096
You had several different paths you could go on. Now, civil engineer can be
00:12:08.096 --> 00:12:09.738
recruited by Google. Yeah. Right.
00:12:10.436 --> 00:12:14.946
They want anybody that's technically minded. And so now our competition for
00:12:14.946 --> 00:12:20.088
the workforce is even more fierce. Exactly. And the pipeline's not increasing, right? We know that.
00:12:21.232 --> 00:12:30.026
So it's up to us to drive that pipeline and show the world what an amazing profession
00:12:30.026 --> 00:12:33.213
engineering is, but also welcoming profession.
00:12:33.382 --> 00:12:37.812
Now, it's a really good point that you raise because the competition for talent,
00:12:38.317 --> 00:12:41.876
everybody focuses in on what engineering firms are competing against themselves.
00:12:41.876 --> 00:12:46.009
And that's not the case because it is the way that you're trained to think.
00:12:46.438 --> 00:12:50.728
It is the number of companies outside of the traditional e-space are.
00:12:51.375 --> 00:12:56.125
Kind of entering into that, right, and seeing what, through technology,
00:12:56.125 --> 00:13:00.245
AI, everything else, that they can kind of come into.
00:13:00.605 --> 00:13:03.065
Right. And that's all competing for the same talent. So, yeah,
00:13:03.385 --> 00:13:06.975
you have to, when you're a firm of any size, you're competing with the big guys,
00:13:06.975 --> 00:13:10.145
the Googles, the Metas, the people who are actually starting to get into the
00:13:10.145 --> 00:13:15.252
question of physical infrastructure, data centers, the support of data center construction.
00:13:15.601 --> 00:13:18.235
All of that is going to be supported by the engineering industry,
00:13:18.235 --> 00:13:19.343
and they're going to look for that talent.
00:13:19.894 --> 00:13:25.565
Yeah, absolutely. And there's no relief on the pressure, I don't think,
00:13:25.565 --> 00:13:30.095
in my lifetime. Yeah, absolutely. So any firm out there that has not yet done
00:13:30.095 --> 00:13:34.610
the benchmark, where should they go to actually take advantage of that?
00:13:35.176 --> 00:13:42.479
So go to ACEC's, the Research Institute's website, and they can find the roadmap
00:13:42.757 --> 00:13:44.045
link there. It's right there.
00:13:44.365 --> 00:13:48.665
And, yeah, I mean, just start the journey. Yeah, start the journey and unlock the results.
00:13:49.065 --> 00:13:53.585
Yeah, don't worry about like, oh, well, we may not score high.
00:13:53.585 --> 00:13:56.565
I don't, you know, whatever. Get in there, see where you are.
00:13:56.838 --> 00:14:00.365
Everybody has a starting point and start the journey.
00:14:00.745 --> 00:14:04.405
It's best to be on the road towards the destination than to be too afraid to
00:14:04.405 --> 00:14:06.277
take this first step. Right.
00:14:06.759 --> 00:14:12.187
So that's really important. So, Chad, thank you for joining us on the program. I really appreciate it.
00:14:12.745 --> 00:14:16.093
I look forward to having you back on as the roadmap continues to evolve.
00:14:16.477 --> 00:14:21.451
And encourage everyone out there to go on to the ACEC Research Institute website.
00:14:22.026 --> 00:14:26.711
Check out the roadmap if you haven't taken it yet. Please engage if you have. Continue to do it.
00:14:27.216 --> 00:14:33.369
And it's going to help the industry thrive in a time of increased competition. That's right.
00:14:33.636 --> 00:14:36.895
So, again, this has been the Engineering Influence Podcast from the American
00:14:36.895 --> 00:14:39.395
Council of Engineering Companies. And we'll see you next time.