Case Studies

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning are all about comfort. So is managing business relationships. As president and son of the founder, Andrew Grundman has followed a legacy of solid relationships his father insisted on when establishing Grundman Mechanical Systems in 1983. While the senior Grundman might claim Andrew worked in the company at age 5 […]

Like most students, Andrew Hartnett couldn’t wait to graduate high school. He imagined that whatever awaited him in the “real world” would be more interesting than going to Brentwood High School every day. Little did he know, he’d find his way back there 15 years later, this time by choice. “Clamoring to come back” when […]

Wouldn’t it be cool to work at a vehicle test track? One where automated vehicles negotiate realistic highways, traffic lights, high-speed intersections and an 80-acre city? Andrew Mathers, director of facilities for Transportation Research Center Inc., doesn’t just work there. He’s helping build it. In its latest innovation, Transportation Research Center, an independent vehicle testing […]

They call her “FIFI,” and she’s just two-of-a-kind: Manufactured in 1944, she is one of the last flightworthy Boeing B-29 Superfortresses in the world. The giant flying museum—99 feet long with a 141-foot wing-span—has appeared in air shows all over North America, representing similar aircraft that flew in World War II and the Korean War, […]

Here in California, wildfire season only seems to come earlier and last longer. What used to be June through October became April through November, but at no time does the threat really dissipate. The huge Golden State is always hot, dry and windy somewhere—Southern California beset by the Santa Ana Winds and Northern California, especially […]

A football fan to the core, Andy O’Dell says pretty much all of 2020 and 2021 has been game time. Like a lot of facilities directors, he had to help migrate employees to remote work to the COVID-19. But he had an added difficultly: he had to halt a major renovation to the corporate headquarters […]

Lifelong design builder Andy Poticha has never won the lottery, but he got lucky several years ago when a former client got some of the first medical cannabis licenses in Illinois and asked him to design and build dispensaries for the business. “I had never seen a dispensary before, and now we’re getting half our […]

Even in the midst of summer, September looms. Schoolchildren have it in the back of their minds they play in the sunshine. By August, stores are offering back-to-school specials, and the nights may carry a small chill in the air. September is looming, as well, for the 2,500 employees at Inland Empire Health Plan in […]

You may have been there once or twice. It’s one of those company-sponsored training or professional development events. During a break, you zip back over to your workspace to touch base with your colleagues and check in on emails, memos and calls. While this may only take a few minutes, as a result, you’re sidetracking […]

Researchers and staff have taught, studied and discovered inside the University of California San Francisco’s Clinical Sciences Building for nearly 90 years. Since opening in 1933, the eight-story, 109,000-square-foot building has stood strong throughout many shakes, tremors and all-out earthquakes that have rocked the City by the Bay, including the devastating 1989 earthquake that caused […]