Audio:
Welcome to AEC Marketing for Principles, brought to you by Smartegies, where we help design in construction firms, navigate sales, and leverage marketing to win more projects. Here are your hosts, Katie Cash and Judy Sparks.

Katie Cash:
Hi, everyone, and thank you for tuning into The AEC Marketing for Principles Podcast. I'm your host, Katie Cash, and for today's episode, I'm joined by my partner in strategy, Judy Sparks, and we also have special guest Marvin Woodward on the show today. For those of you that don't know Marvin, he's a civil engineer turned public servant who currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director for the Construction Division of the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission, or for today's episode we'll refer to it as GSFIC, because let's just be honest, that's a mouthful, Marvin. We appreciate you being on the show and thank you so much for joining us.

Marvin Woodward:
You're welcome. Good to be here.

Katie Cash:
Very good. Marvin, let's just start at the top, if you could help our listeners who may not be familiar with GSFIC, can you give them an idea or maybe an overview of your agency and some insights in terms of what the construction division does there?

Marvin Woodward:
I certainly can. The Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission has been a commission that's been around since 1972. There's two components to GSFIC, there's a construction wing and there's a financial wing. On the financial side, their responsibility is to sell general obligation bonds that go towards designing and constructing projects. All the state agencies make their requests to the Office of Planning and Budget. That budget is put together and then bonds are sold typically once a year. That amount has been around $1 billion a year pretty consistently for the last few years, in fact we just closed on a bond sale last week right at a billion dollars, and then once the bonds are sold, then on the construction side we will work with the agencies, develop RFQs, RFPs for the design and construction of those projects.

Marvin Woodward:
Currently, we have about 145 projects on the books that are either in programming, planning, design, construction, or closeout. We have about 30 projects right now that are under active construction, so hopefully that gives you an overview of GSFIC.

Katie Cash:
Wow, Marvin. That is quite a load that you and your staff are carrying downtown, and I am just wondering, when you refer to the state agencies across the state, can you give us some insight on which state agencies are your biggest I guess capital improvement constructors? I know there's lots of state agencies and the physical building requirements of each agency differs, so could you educate our listeners a little bit about where a lot of the billion dollars goes to in terms of the spread across agencies?

Marvin Woodward:
Certainly. Our largest customer is the Board of Regents, both with number of projects and dollar amount, and then our second-largest customer is The Technical College System of Georgia. The work that we do is definitely higher ed focused, after that, it can range. Currently, we're doing quite a few projects for the Department of Transportation. We're not doing any horizontal work, but we are doing the vertical work that they need, for example, Welcome Center, rest area reconstructions, they are building some new district offices in their seven districts throughout the state, so we've been managing the construction of their new facilities.

Marvin Woodward:
We also are involved with dam rehabilitation, so I think our fourth-largest customer now would be the Soil and Water Conservation districts. A lot of dams are in need of repair and so we're managing the concrete and earthwork needed for that. We also do work for Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Human Services, Department of Driver Services, the State Board of Education has three facilities throughout the state where children that are hearing or visually impaired go to school, so we do some work on those campuses as well. That's a rough overview of the type of work we do.

Katie Cash:
It sounds like you're doing a little bit of everything across all the different state agencies, is there a certain threshold in terms of project size or complexity that would, I guess institute GSFIC getting involved? Or are you guys always involved in helping to procure and oversee the design and construction process on behalf of these using agencies?

Marvin Woodward:
Obviously, the Board of Regents has a lot of project management resources, so anything with the Board of Regents that's under $5 million, typically they will manage in-house and we will not use them, that's a general rule. If there's a campus that's a little smaller and they have a project that's under that amount that may need some help, we certainly would be available to do that. But after that all the other agencies, there is no dollar amount limit, so their project management sources are limited, and so we act as their in-house consultants and project managers.

Katie Cash:
So Marvin with the shared responsibility between your team and your customer agencies that you're serving's teams, when it comes down to the selection process, can you give us an overview of how typically the makeup of a selection committee, what that might look like? A question that we get a lot in our consulting practices, who's on the selection committee? And they're not usually looking for exact names, but the makeup of the committee, how many from GSFIC? How many from the using agency? How many from the end user? Could you give us some insight on that front?

Marvin Woodward:
Certainly. First of all, I want to say that everything that we advertise is on the Georgia procurement registry. So anybody that's seeking work needs to sign up for that, I'll be checking that frequently because 100% of what we advertise is listed there. We typically have a five person panel both for selecting design professionals and construction professionals. The makeup of the panel would be two employees from the Georgia State Financing Investment Commission, two from the headquarters of the agency that we're working for, and then one person from the specific campus where the project will be built. Recently the technical college system asked for another vote. So that panel is going to be actually six people, but that's only going to be for the technical college system. So there'll be two people from the local campus, two folks from the headquarters, and two folks from the Georgia State Finance Investment Commission.

Katie Cash:
That is super helpful, to echo what Judy says, we get that question all the time of just what the makeup is, and when you think about those selection committees, Marvin, when it comes to the representatives from GSFIC, is it typically your project managers? Or do you get down into your CCS's, who typically is reviewing the proposals and part of the interview selection?

Marvin Woodward:
Best answer I can give you is it depends.

Katie Cash:
It's our favorite answer.

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, sorry for that. It's always the project manager that's going to be assigned to that, so that's going to be one of the folks. After that, it could be a CCS, it could be our regional CCS or it could be somebody in our design review group. At that point it just depends on workload and maybe who's available.

Katie Cash:
Are there any where you sit in on those? Do you ever get to participate at that level?

Marvin Woodward:
Rarely. I have for a couple of major projects, one being the judicial center that we are currently constructing on Capitol Hill, but 99% of the time or less, I am not a voting member.

Katie Cash:
Got you. So Marvin, when you have your team assigned, you said always the project manager. Tell me how you're organized internally, do you have certain project managers that are assigned to certain campuses or is that based on availability? Do you always have the same person say at University of Georgia or at Georgia Tech?

Marvin Woodward:
We do not always have the same person, we do like to rotate project managers around, just so they can develop a different perspective, different skillset, different type of project, but obviously some of our agencies and campuses that we work for feel strongly that they'd like to have somebody back because the team worked well together, so we do try to accommodate that if we can, but that's not always possible.

Katie Cash:
And how many project managers do you have on your team?

Marvin Woodward:
We have 25 currently.

Katie Cash:
Wow. That's quite a team.

Marvin Woodward:
And we have about 25 CCSs on the job site every day looking over quality, those folks live all over the state, most of our project managers live in the Atlanta region.

Katie Cash:
So for those listeners who are not familiar with the acronym CCS, can you educate us on what that stands for?

Marvin Woodward:
That's Contract Compliance Specialist. Those are folks that are assigned to a job site that they typically just have one or two projects they're assigned to, and their main focus is quality, just to observe what's being constructed meets the plans and specifications, if they observe something that's not, then that's their responsibility to raise that to the design professional, who then raise it to the construction professional and try to get that issue resolved. They're just another set of eyes and ears on a project to encourage quality.

Katie Cash:
So with such a robust team in place, do you ever outsource project management or hire a program managers to help you?

Marvin Woodward:
We currently have hired two project or program managers to assist us just due to the fact we're extremely busy. So for the first time I'd say in the last six months that we have outsourced that role to a couple people. Our preference would be to try to handle it in house, but because of workload and everybody is trying to find good people, now we have had to outsource that, so we're not opposed to it, and we'll do it for certain situations that are needed.

Katie Cash:
If we could just pivot just a little bit, I'd like to speak maybe to those listeners that haven't had an opportunity to build a relationship with GSFIC in the past and maybe they're looking at wanting to figure out how they can get on your vendor list, or figure out how they could build a relationship with you and your team Marvin, moving forward. Are there any initial rules or maybe minimum qualifications in your mind that a firm needs to be aware of before they start pursuing your work? I know you mentioned that, "Hey, you probably need to check out the Georgia procurement registry so you can stay abreast of projects being advertised." But beyond that, any rules of engagement to start with?

Marvin Woodward:
There really is no rules of engagement. I mean, if a firm feels like they're capable of designing or constructing our project for us, we encourage that. I'm open to meeting any of those firms in our office here and give them a chance to get to know us and our procurement process. So no minimum requirements, and I'm very open to meeting with firms and trying to assist them in obtaining state work.

Katie Cash:
So would you be the right person, I guess for them to initiate that beginning relationship would start at the top start with you and-

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, they certainly can, or Jeff Lacks our procurement director, either one, we're both very open to meeting with people. I will say because we just sold bonds, Jeff is extremely busy now, because he's trying to get RFPs and RFQs out on the street so people can go to work.

Katie Cash:
Got you. Okay. So.

Marvin Woodward:
So it may be easier to get to me at this point, but yeah, we're both open to that.

Judy Sparks:
So, Katie, that's a great question about how do you get visibility for the first time with GSFIC. Marvin, some providers a lot of our clients have been working with you for a long time. Do you find value in them coming back and updating you on changes within their firm, and things that they may think you know, but maybe you're not current on because you work with so many firms?

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, I do think that's very valuable because, I mean, I take that opportunity to educate them on what's going on at GSFIC, so I think it's not only a one way street, it's a two way street. But the input, the challenges that they're having, I think it's valuable for me to know that because I think that helps us make better decisions at GSFIC. So yeah, any changes an organization may have or... A lot of times we just talk about what's going on in the industry, and what's going well for them, what isn't, that proves to be very valuable information for me.

Judy Sparks:
So is there a recommended frequency for those types of requests? I know that you don't want to hear from a firm every week, but maybe once a year is too long. So is it really predicated on the value of what they want to share with you? Or is there an etiquette in terms of how often they should be contacting you?

Marvin Woodward:
I really don't think there's an etiquette. I mean it's rare that we get a job completed in one year. So probably that one to two years cycle is fine. I have appreciated when firms reach out to me and say, "Hey, we've got some changes in our upper management, or we're buying another firm or we're going to be bought out, and I wanted you to know before it hits the papers." That type of information is always greatly appreciated.

Judy Sparks:
I'm so glad you brought that up because as you know, we get involved in a lot of merger and acquisition communication projects and that is a question that our clients always ask in terms of what do clients appreciate? Do they want to be... There's always a fine line you don't want the news to leak before you're ready for it to leak, but at the same time you don't want your clients to read it in the paper. So we've always given our clients the advice that they should always reach out to their top customers and make sure they're in the know before the general public, and it's satisfying to hear that you agree with that.

Marvin Woodward:
I Strongly agree with that.

Katie Cash:
We've got it on record. One other question, not so much about mergers and acquisitions, but more about the frequency and wanting to have some more face to face time with you and your team, Marvin, that we get from our industry partners is whether or not GSFIC would entertain industry partners coming in to provide lunch and learns and keep you guys updated on technology or new construction methods or new materials. Is that something that the agency entertains? And is there a best practice about that?

Marvin Woodward:
We do entertain that. I will say though, we like to have the focus be on education, like you say, a new technique, a new technology, more than just a marketing piece for whatever firm may come in, but we do, do, I'm going to say a few of those a year, maybe four to six. All our staff tends to be here on Mondays, so that's always a day that we typically would do that.

Katie Cash:
Okay, that's helpful. One other question that we get a lot in terms of clients trying to decide whether or not they should pursue certain projects once they're advertised is, is there an unwritten rule or a best practice that the agency is thinking about? [inaudible 00:18:26] geographically selecting the right partners, there's this blurred line on whether or not firms in Atlanta should really chase work, say in Savannah or Albany, and if that's just automatically going to go to the South Georgia folks. Can you maybe shed some light on that, on whether there's any truth there? How you approach that [crosstalk 00:18:43]-

Judy Sparks:
General philosophy about that.

Marvin Woodward:
That's a really difficult and tough question, because we're a statewide agency, I think our folks probably lean towards just trying to hire the best firm that's available. The folks at the local level, obviously they live in those communities and might feel like a firm that's closer by is more suitable. So I mean, it's difficult to give you an answer. A lot of times a firm may be based in Atlanta, but their project team, or may live very close to the site. So that would carry maybe more weight with the selection team, just knowing where our folks live and where they're coming from. So also they had experience with similar project types or they had experience with the campus, so each reviewer kind of views that differently.

Marvin Woodward:
I know everybody would like a crystal ball on that, but my observation is there is not one, and we just try to select the firm that's most suitable, and we do look at how much work folks have. So that comes into play as well, so if we think a firm's pretty stretched then we know we may not be getting their A or B team and that may not be a positive for them for this project, but it's positive that they have a lot of work with maybe other clients. So hope that answers your question.

Judy Sparks:
Marvin, along the same lines, it sounds like you're always looking for the firm that makes the most sense, sometimes a building is specialized in nature and there might be a firm outside of the immediate geographic region that brings specialized expertise in that building type. There might be other times where a firm might be based somewhere else but they've got local resources. So in your endeavor to find the firm that makes the most sense, is there a spread the work policy in terms of one from having too much state work? Is there any consideration that maybe XYZ firm has won your last two projects, so maybe they won't be considered for a third, even if you think they have the capacity to do it?

Marvin Woodward:
We do not have a formal spread the work policy. But I would say if somebody has three projects with us, we're probably going to give a strong look to other firms, but that is not formally written anywhere. We do want to try to right size the project with the right size firm, and also if you're a national firm that does hundreds of millions of dollars of work and you're submitting on a $4 million renovation, you're probably not the right firm for that project, and we would consider a smaller contractor being right sized for that job.

Judy Sparks:
I'm so glad you brought that up because one of the questions that we get a lot from these big national firms that are trying to enter the public sector, particularly state market here in Georgia, is that if they are new to Georgia and you know their brand as a national firm, but unfamiliar with their local resources or maybe they're new to the Atlanta scene or the Georgia scene. Sometimes they feel like it's a good strategy to come to you and say, "Hey, let us do a small project for you to prove ourselves." Is there any merit in that philosophy?

Marvin Woodward:
There is merit in that, and I think it's helpful for us to know that going in, that they may have tried a couple, two or three times on a larger project, they maybe haven't been shortlisted. So, the proper approach may be to work for an agency that has a smaller project to prove themselves, get their foot in the door, and to have us get familiar with their staff and how they do business. So even though they may do large projects in other states, and we have a lot of great contractors in Georgia, so the competition is stiff and fierce and so that definitely is a good strategy in some occasions.

Judy Sparks:
I'm a big believer that people learn more from failure than they often do from success. So one of the favorite questions that I always like to ask owners like yourself are, what are some of those common mistakes that you see firms make time and time again when trying to pursue work with your agency? Is there anything that you can see the iceberg coming, and they just keep doing it over and over again that you could tell our listeners to stop doing?

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, I would say in the interview process, probably one of the common mistakes are they, especially in an interview, they spend a lot of time talking about previous project experience. And at that point, I mean they've already made the short list, so the panel already knows that their resume is solid. So what the panel wants to hear is, what's your approach for my current project? What do you know about my current project? Why are you the best team? What are going to be the challenges? What are some things that as an owner, I need to be thinking about on this project? So I would just encourage firms to spend more time on the current project and what they've done in the past because the past has already gotten them to the table. So at this point, people want to look forward.

Judy Sparks:
Marvin, I'm glad you brought up the interview process, back in episode three, the Art of the Pitch, we talked about best practices for interviews because as you know we coach a lot of teams, and help them with their presentations. There was a lot of discussion around the cost of client acquisition in our industry. So we have found that the firms that have a lot of resources are able to produce very detailed, cost models, project animations, fly-throughs, renderings. I mean there's a lot of resources, technology has really amped up a company's ability to demonstrate to you visually what they're thinking about on your project in order to win your project. So one of the things that becomes difficult is when we have a firm that is maybe a local firm that's very good, but they're not a big national firm, and they don't have the same resources. How much does the technology play into being able to influence a selection committee in an interview?

Marvin Woodward:
I don't want to say it has no impact, but I would say the much larger percentage of impact is just going to be the project team itself. And is the team comfortable with the people that they're meeting and that they're interviewing and questioning, and do they think that's the right team for the job. Because most everybody has the technology now, so that's not really a differentiator between firms. I do know from the design side it's always a debate whether they should actually show some renderings or not, because some folks may love the renderings and other folks on the panel may hate them, so that could work against them. I'm not sure I've got a great answer there, that's a risk one way or the other, but it really comes down to the people that you're working with and are you comfortable with their approach?

Judy Sparks:
When it comes to the people being proposed on your project teams, we often get the question on whether or not firms should include firm leadership on the project team. I'm just curious from where you sit, if you really sit there and see the gentleman who's name is on the door proposed as your project executive or project director, does that weigh heavily on you selecting that firm? Or do you kind of blow that off like, yeah, I'm never going to see that guy, this is just a marketing tactic. Any thoughts there?

Marvin Woodward:
I think if it's a large project it's always good to maybe see the president of the company and have him welcome and introduce this team, but the bulk of the time needs to be spent hearing from the folks that are going to be actually on the job site, the folks that are going to be interacting day to day with the folks at GSFIC, and are using agency. So, I think it's good to know that the CEO's are there to support the project and they're going to dedicate the resources needed, but the bulk of the time needs to be spent with the project team.

Judy Sparks:
So Marvin, I wish you could be a fly in the wall in some of our discussions with our customers when we're helping firms prep to compete for your work. One of the questions when it comes to project team that we always, always get is, well, this superintendent has done three projects with GSFIC, but the projects that they've done for GSFIC in the past are not similar to the project that we are pursuing now. But we have this other superintendent that hasn't worked for GSFIC that specializes in that building type. Who's the better superintendent?

Marvin Woodward:
Man, you're putting me on the spot.

Katie Cash:
Are you buying Pepsi? Are you buying coke?

Marvin Woodward:
My wife works for Coca Cola? So I buy coke.

Katie Cash:
That's a good answer, you're in Atlanta, that's a good answer.

Marvin Woodward:
I'm in Atlanta buy coke. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to give you a good answer on that one. There's advantages to both. I think I would probably lean towards the one that has GSFIC experience, especially if we think they have the ability to build the project type that maybe they haven't worked on, but we could clearly see that they've got the ability to do that.

Judy Sparks:
Do you think that, certainly, if it's a really, really complex BSL four level lab, you want someone that's done that before, right? But if it's a building type that might not be as complicated, I always tell our clients that if you haven't learned GSFIC's processes and procedures, if you're not familiar with E-builder or the expectations of the staff that, that learning curve might be harder than the building type.

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, it might be, but I think a way to mitigate that is you could team up a superintendent that maybe hasn't worked with GSFIC with a project manager that has.

Judy Sparks:
That's great advice.

Marvin Woodward:
Because the project manager is going to be doing the bulk of the paperwork, so together that would probably make a really good team.

Katie Cash:
I think that's great advice. If I could pick your brain on behalf of our architectural clients, one of the big questions we always get when it comes to them selecting their team members, really comes to the makeup of their engineering partners. So I'm curious from where you sit, how much influence does your specialty sub consultants and the engineering consultant makeup of a design team impact selecting your designers?

Marvin Woodward:
I think on the mechanical side it's starting to weigh more heavily than it did even five years ago. We're having more and more issues with projects on the mechanical side, particularly controls interacting with the HVAC equipment. So it's beginning to be more important, I'd say for the mechanical engineer.

Katie Cash:
And is it important enough for these design firms to bring their mechanical engineer with them to the interview?

Marvin Woodward:
I think so. I would agree with that. I think yes, it is. I think that would be valuable.

Katie Cash:
That is really helpful. I know we've jumped around a little bit, I just want to confirm and just maybe reiterate to our listeners. When you are actively advertising projects through the procurement registry, you guys do have a fairly formal procurement process. From my understanding it's typically step one qualification, step two for the shortlisted firms a proposal and interview. Is that typically the process that you guys use across the board?

Marvin Woodward:
It is. It's a process that's worked fairly well for us and one that we're comfortable and believe in.

Judy Sparks:
Okay. So Katie, if you don't mind, we have just a little bit of time left with Marvin and I'd like to pivot the conversation just a little bit about operations. Marvin, can you educate us, and our listeners, and our clients on how do you determine which construction delivery method is most appropriate for the project? Is that funding driven? Is that resource driven? Is that schedule driven? When do you say CM at risk is the right delivery method versus a design build, versus the traditional design bid build?

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, fantastic question. For the most part the border region is very comfortable with the CM at risk process. Almost everything we do with them falls under that delivery method, and a lot of the projects we're doing for them are larger. So the interaction between the construction professional and design professional is very important, we believe we gain value from that, so we like that method. Particularly for buildings that aren't cookie cutter, that do have some value engineering opportunities. Stepping back and looking at the big picture, there's no formula, it's just discussion with the clients. If budget's really tight and possibly the design is almost complete, it might make sense just to hard bid or low bid it from that point. Very little schematic work has been done, and it's a clean slate, we're not sure about our budget.

Marvin Woodward:
Then we're very comfortable with the CM at risk process because we give the team a budget to design and build towards, and they work towards that goal and we never go over that budget. I will say for design build, we've had good success when it's a renovation type projects, the ability for the two teams to coordinate, and not have us get in the middle of that. A lot of times the renovations are needed rather quickly because the schools are shutting down one or two semesters later they'd like to be back in there. So time is of the essence, so there's no question that design build is the fastest way, and so if time is absolutely critical, then we'll give a strong look towards design build.

Judy Sparks:
Did you see clear advantages from where you sit of one delivery method over another or does GSFIC have a favorite delivery method?

Marvin Woodward:
We really don't, we'd like to have all the tools in the toolbox, and we want the ability to use whatever the delivery method may be appropriate for that project. So I can't say I have a favorite.

Judy Sparks:
Well, I suspected you might say that because one of the most impressive things that I've seen come out of your agency is the ability to think outside the box, and to really try to find the best solution for your customer. So I've noticed over the years that there's been some times where you use a hybrid, maybe it's a select bit or maybe it's a different delivery method that doesn't neatly fall in one of those three buckets. Can you talk to us a little bit about the times you've done that and why you've done that?

Marvin Woodward:
Yup. I'm glad you brought that up. During the economic downturn, it's hard to believe it's almost 10 years ago, we had firms that were, small firms submitting on projects that they had no business doing. Then we had large firms submitting on really small projects. So we went to the select bid method where we could short list the contractors based on their qualifications or experience, and then we hard bid it from there. So our short list may be three, four, five, six firms depending on where the cutoff may be, but at that point we were getting a competitive price and It did give us a chance to select firms that we were comfortable that could do the job. So in some ways, that's the best of both worlds, you get to select your pool, but then you're also getting a competitive price at that point. So some of our agencies really do like that method.

Judy Sparks:
Do you find that method more difficult now when the economy is strong and people have more work than they can do?

Marvin Woodward:
I wouldn't say it's more difficult, I think maybe the fact that some firms don't like the hard bid, so it may not be as attractive to them because there's a lot of work out there, when the work is less available, and maybe the state's the only game in town then firms are more open to submitting a bid. But a lot of the firms that we deal with I think probably would prefer doing CM at risk versus hard bid. We have to also try the hybrid method with the CM at risk process where instead of us selecting the design professional, and then selecting the construction professional and telling those two firms, "Hey, we're going to marry you up and you're going to be forced to work together." We have tried where the two sides can decide who they want to work with and come in as one team. And then there would only be one proposal, one interview, but we would have two separate contracts at that point, just like the CM at risk process. So couple of advantages to that are the firms get to decide who they're comfortable working with, and from our perspective it's one less interview that has to be coordinated, so we can get work on the street faster.

Judy Sparks:
So talk to me a little bit more about holding the separate contracts versus one contract with a contractor that then holds the contract with the architect. From your point of view, how is that better for the state?

Marvin Woodward:
I think from our perspective is those sides then feel that they can freely talk with us. And so if one side isn't performing then we would probably know it, and then they wouldn't get hurt from that arrangement. I think it just enables firms to communicate more freely with us. That's probably the best answer I can give you.

Judy Sparks:
I think that's a great answer, probably something that a lot of firms hadn't thought about from your point of view. So thank you for that.

Katie Cash:
Marvin, as we go to wrap up today's episode, I really appreciate your feedback and open and honest answers. Is there any lasting advice or information you want to share with our listeners?

Marvin Woodward:
I do and it has to do with close out ironically.

Judy Sparks:
Okay, perfect. Let's close it out.

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah, close it out. One of the last impressions we have on a construction project is how it closed out. It's a trend lately that at the projects just aren't getting closed out timely. Firms are sending people to work with other jobs and then it's very difficult to get the subcontractors back, which then is frustrating for our clients because there's issues that aren't being taken care of. So, I just encourage firms to close out strong, and don't forget about trying to finish the job because that is a lasting impression. And the better you do that, the better your firm will be viewed.

Katie Cash:
So finishing strong-

Marvin Woodward:
Finishing strong

Katie Cash:
Is really what we're looking for there.

Marvin Woodward:
Yeah. Get the punch list done, address the issues and then clean up and move on.

Katie Cash:
Love that. So for all of our listeners just to recap, you want to familiarize yourself with the Georgia procurement registry, if you are unfamiliar with that, we will include a link to it on our episode recap page just to make it easy for you. Looking at the selection committee makeups for all of GSFIC projects, the majority are going to include five committee members, two from GSFIC, two from the using agency and one from the actual campus itself, with the exception of the Technical College System of Georgia TCSG where they will have six members on the committee, again, two from GSFIC, two from the agency and then two from the campus.

Katie Cash:
When you're considering proposing on work for the GSFIC, make sure that you really think they're your team, because they really care about who's going to be designing or building that project or performing commissioning even making sure that you have the right team available. If you get a chance to interview in front of them, don't waste your time talking about the past, they've seen your portfolio, it got you to the table, let's talk about their project and focus in on how you're going to deliver the ultimate level of success.

Katie Cash:
Make sure you finish strong when you are awarded that project, and if you are looking for your entree into meeting Marvin and his team at GSFIC, just know that his door is open, he welcomes those meetings as well as his director of procurement, Jeff Lacks. So again, Marvin, thank you for your time. Judy, Thank you for the great conversation as always, and for everybody out there, have a great week.

Judy Sparks:
Thank you, Katie.

Audio:
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