Case Studies Region: West

At 5:04 p.m. it struck: A 6.9 magnitude earthquake. For 15 seconds, the earth shook; structures collapsed like dust, bridges were wrenched like toys, craters ripped open to swallow people and vehicles. It was October 17, 1989—the infamous Loma Prieta earthquake, which ultimately killed 67 people and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage across […]

So how does one get into the profession of managing the physical facilities of a multinational? Nowadays, a university student so inclined might find specific courses on the subject. Then there are the old-school types like Jim Zuiderhoek, since November 2009 the director of global real estate and facilities services for Risk Management Solutions in […]

Patience is both a virtue and a sound business practice, especially in the residential HVAC and plumbing construction industry. Building solid customer relationships takes time and requires providing honest, prompt and professional service, time and time again. It doesn’t matter how small the job, every customer and every home matters. It is a tenet that […]

A crew of workers clad in hardhats and neon yellow vests emerges from the bottom left corner of the screen. In the distance, a ten-story crane awaits the day’s first payload, while trucks carrying industrial pipes hug the massive concrete wall. It’s just past 7 a.m. local time in Bozeman, Montana, and the team at […]

It’s about meeting the very overdue need of tending to the mental health of some of the most vulnerable children and teens in California’s Orange County. The specialized nature of such treatment being what it is, the standards of CHOC Children’s Mental Health Inpatient Center had to exceed the very stringent codes by which the […]

He’s on to new adventures after a most eventful year and few months as director of global real estate and workplace services for Carta, a software platform for founders, investors and employees to manage equity and ownership, headquartered in San Francisco. But first Gelson Da Silva II plans to spend a few months with some […]

It seems safe to conclude that the Sacramento Municipal Utility District is anything but penny-wise, pound-foolish when it comes to upgrading many popular campgrounds in what’s known as the Crystal Basin Recreational Area in the Eldorado National Forest of eastern California. For SMUD—one of the nation’s largest community-owned utilities—entrusted part of a comprehensive $113 million […]

When joining rapidly-growing cybersecurity and IT management company Tanium, Joey Martinez was running—sprinting, really—long before he hit the ground. Tapped as the company’s global head of facilities and real estate, he began day one scouting high-rise office space for the new company headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area. “I like to be super busy,” […]

According to a March report conducted by analytics firm CoreLogic, the median home price in California’s Bay Area has surged above $800,000—the highest anywhere outside of Manhattan, and a staggering 14.7 percent increase from 2017 numbers. In Cupertino, a city of 60,000 in the heart of Silicon Valley, a software engineer making $200,000 a year […]

As another summer heats up in the Denver metro area, dwellers can expect to endure 35 to 40 days of temperatures hitting 90 degrees or higher. It’ll be times like these when many of them will discover—the hard way, of course—that their air conditioning isn’t humming up to full capacity. Well, good luck finding an […]