November 2012 Happenings Newsletter

happeningsvolume 29 // november 2012

water services team membersinside

water services team members pitch in to help the community

benefit changes and open enrollment for US staff

kudos, dom bernardo!

project highlight: new configuration for I-465/allisonville road interchange

app of the month

project highlight: fountain square streetscape

eva vargas serves as WOW mentor to young cleveland hopefuls

thriving opportunities in abu dhabi with major government developer

bring your lunch...and learn!

congratulations, john wujek!

chris ranck describes RW Armstrong’s role in important regulatory amendment

ethics hotline

wellness challenge in south bend

On Saturday, October 20th, members of the Indianapolis Water Services Team worked together to volunteer for the Great Indy Cleanup, a program managed by the non-profit Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB) in con-junction with the City of Indianapolis to pro-vide residents with resources to coordinate a neighborhood-wide cleanup. KIB managed the process and recruited volunteers, and the City provided support with dumpsters and solid waste trucks. We worked in the Englewood neighborhood adjacent to Rural and Washing-ton Streets on the Near-Eastside. This is an in-ner city neighborhood that will benefit greatly from environmental and aesthetic improve-ments that result from the cleanup.

After a welcome from Mayor Greg Ballard on a cold but clear morning, the team was as-signed to paint a mural on a long retaining wall that has been in the neighborhood for some time. The image was designed by a local artist to serve as public art and depicted the topography of Indiana from the west (Wabash River) to the southeast (Ohio River). In addition to the mural, the more than 100 volunteers who were present worked on trash and weed removal, development of a pocket park, and creation of a community garden in abandoned lots.

We typically try to work on a volunteer activity like this once or twice a year as a chance to give back to our community and provide value to our city’s neighbor-hoods, and just as importantly, to build teamwork by working side by side on a physical, tangible project. We finished the day with pizza and drinks at a nearby estab-lishment, Jockamo’s Pizza.

Participating team members were Angie Smith with children Kezaiah and Makaila; Sarah Rutkowski; Jeremy Kosegi with family members Jenny, Alex, and Emma; Jay Gibson; Scott Lord; David Clark; Mark Dummett; Brian Powers; and Tim George. I am a proud board member of Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and am proud that our com-pany has so many people who are always willing and happy to volunteer to improve the quality of life in Indianapolis.

By Tim Georgepitch in to help the community

Painting the mural; RW Armstrong’s Brian Powers (black jacket) and Jeremy Kosegi (brown jacket)

show off their art skills

Sarah Rutkowski and Mark Dummett are eager to help

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With all of the benefit changes taking place now and coming up toward year-end, it’s important that we all stay on top of the deadlines to ensure we make the changes we intended to make. Please take note of the following impor-tant dates/steps through Phase I and Phase II of the benefits integration with CHA:

Phase I – Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, 2012:

� Transition medical carrier to Cigna Healthcare and Rx pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) to Cigna Home Delivery

– All rates stay the same through Dec. 31 and coverage is almost identical to what is cur-rently in place

– Access to vision benefit within the Cigna medical benefit and termination of current vision coverage

� Transition dental carrier to Delta Dental

– Partial company contribution will now be provided towards dental benefit premium costs and therefore, rates are substantially lower

Phase II – Beginning Jan. 1, 2013:

� Transition to CHA’s medical plan offerings with Cigna

– Three plan offerings – refer to employee pre-sentation for an overview of each plan

– Employee contributions are still being final-ized and will be shared during our employee presentation in mid-November

� Transition to CHA’s Rx Structure

� Provide additional dental plan option under Delta Dental

� Transition to CHA’s Flexible Spending Account (FSA) administrator

� Introduce voluntary vision benefit offering

� Transition ancillary benefits (life, disability, and EAP) to CHA

There will be a lot of information available in the next couple of months, so please be sure to become familiar with the documents and don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected] or ext. 114 with any questions you may have as we walk together through this process.

benefit changes and open enrollment for US staff By Christina Bishop

On October 18th, our Chief Financial Officer, Dom Bernardo, was named Large Company CFO of the Year by the Business Review here in Albany, NY.

At the awards ceremony, which was attended by over 300 people, Dom recognized the Finance staff for making the award possible. Winning was a team effort. I thank Dom, his staff and everyone who assists them for ensuring our financial ship stayed the course through the turbulence of the past four years.

Dom, on behalf of all of us, congratulations.

Ray Rudolph, Jr., PEChief Executive Officer

PS: In honor of Dom, we bought a 1/8 page ad in the Business Review. Those of you who work with Dom might enjoy seeing it.

kudos, dom!

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Chalk up another great design by the RW Armstrong Transportation team. The new configuration of the I-465/Allisonville Road interchange is a single point urban interchange (SPUI), which will handle the 47,000 vehicles that cross the Allisonville Road bridge each day more effectively than the original diamond inter-change that was constructed in the 1960s. The new interchange combines all I-465 ramps into one signalized intersection—the sin-gle point—allowing for fewer backups onto I-465 and a smoother flow of traffic on Allisonville Road between 82nd and 86th Streets. The new bridge is now eight lanes wide—three through lanes in each direction with double, back-to-back left-turn lanes. There will also be bike lanes on both sides of the bridge and a sidewalk on the east side of the bridge.

INDOT and Walsh Construction pursued an aggressive schedule to build and open the bridge in the shortest time possible. Original-ly estimated to close for up to seven months, the Allisonville Road bridge over I-465 was open to traffic in fewer than four months. Highlights of the project include:

� This bridge is only the fifth SPUI and third single point urban interchange (bridge) in Indiana.

� Rebuilding an existing diamond interchange that handles nearly 50,000 vpd. The bridge was closed to through traffic on Allisonville Road to expedite construction. The new interchange configuration allowed existing interstate ramps to remain open while nearly all bridge and ramp reconstruction was taking place.

� Innovative bidding offered two alternative bid types: a design bid–build (DBB) option consisting of the traditional three sequential phases: design, bid-ding, and construction of fully-detailed contract plans, versus a design build (DB) option where the design and construction services are contracted by a single entity known as the design-build contractor. The contractor is responsible for all the work on the project based on a required scope of work. This project utilized a direct side-by-side comparison of approaches with DBB as the winning bid.

� Last but not least is the fact that the majority of the con-struction was completed before the 2012 holiday shop-ping season!

project highlight: new configuration forBy Scott Hornsby

Aerial view of interchange (photo provided by INDOT)

Construction of the I-465/Allisonville Road interchange

I-465/allisonville road interchange

By Gabe Peters app of the month

Flipboard—Your Social News MagazineFlipboard, Apple’s iPad App

of the Year, is an innovative way to browse through the things you like to read the most on your iPhone or iPad. Flipboard creates a personalized magazine out of

everything you like to read. Just touch each pre-view to expand the full article.

Fill Flipboard with the things you like to read, from niche blogs to publications like The New York Times and Rolling Stone. Flipboard creates a single place to enjoy, browse, comment on, and share all the news, photos and updates that matter to you.

Scan the QR code to down-load Flipboard from iTunes or visit www.flipboard.com for more information.

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The fountain in Fountain Square

project highlight: fountain square streetscape

eva vargas serves as WOW mentor

By Jonathan Mooney

Streetscape rendering

RW Armstrong worked in association with Green 3 and Ninebark to design a landmark streetscape and public space in the Fountain Square neighbor-hood of downtown Indianapo-lis. Fountain Square is an emerging art district and is one of the city’s designated Cultural Dis-tricts.

The heart of Fountain Square is the “square” itself which historically was a place to gather and was the center of commerce and travel in the district. This space is formed by the intersection of three well-traveled city streets and over time has lost much of its cul-

tural function and aesthetic beauty. This project was dubbed “Putting the Square back in Fountain Square” by the project team and creates a new streetscape that, while based on the area’s history, speaks to its exciting fu-ture. The project included:

� Reuse of a historic sculpture in a new fountain setting

� Design of a new European-style fountain as a traffic island

� Creation of a new public pla-za including a custom shade structure

� New sidewalks and curbs

� Lighting and furnishings

The project included the design of urban rain gardens located in curb bump-outs at intersections. The rain gardens were designed to capture 100% of the runoff from a normal storm event. Overflow was handled by allowing a full rain garden to flow out to a traditional storm inlet located downstream.

Last month the Cleveland office’s very own Eva Vargas was asked to be the opening speaker at the second annual Cleveland Wings of Women (WOW) Conference sponsored by the International Women’s Air and Space Museum (IWASM) located at the Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) in Cleve-land, Ohio. WOW is designed to engage middle school and high school girls in the exploration of aviation and space careers through a day of speakers, hands-on activities, and the opportunity to take an EAA-sponsored Young Eagles flight at Burke Lakefront Airport. Eva also served as a mentor for this event where she had the opportunity to connect to a group of aspiring students and share insight about her career field. Eva’s participation in this event supported not only a fellow tenant of the airport, IWASM, but also a client of RW Armstrong. Eva’s continued leadership and support for local organizations around the Cleveland area have helped play a vital role in RW Armstrong’s local success. Eva Vargas speaking at the WOW conference

to young cleveland hopefuls By Brittany Smith

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thriving opportunities in abu dhabiBy Annemarie Franssenwith major government developer

The RW Armstrong team has devel-oped a successful relationship with Abu Dhabi’s major government-owned real estate developer, Aldar Properties PJSC. Aldar’s flagship development is Yas Is-land, a 25-million square-meter island that will become a unique international tourist destination with a world-class F1 racetrack, signature hotels, a Ferrari theme park, golf courses, marinas, polo clubs, retail destinations, apartments, villas, and numerous restaurants.

RW Armstrong started working with Aldar in August 2010 when the firm was appointed for the design and construc-tion supervision of the Aldar Business Centre on Yas Island. This iconic $8-mil-lion community-support facility is de-signed to echo the forward-thinking contemporary structures of the island. Starting off with this smaller project, the team moved to bigger things with Aldar when the ACE Hardware store was opened on August 31, 2012. Again, RW Armstrong was appointed for design

and construction supervision for the sec-ond-largest store for this DIY retailer. The store has achieved sustainability rating for the design. Aldar’s satisfaction with RW Armstrong’s work has led to a third major project: the Zone K Residential Community on Yas Island, a key part of delivering the Emirate’s Vision 2030 Plan to deliver high-quality housing for Emirati families.

RW Armstrong is responsible for the

residential development comprising ar-chitectural, structural, and MEP work for the 1,020 villas from schematic through construction documents, and for con-cept through construction documents for the residential club, retail center, 2,000-person mosque, and school. The school will accomodate 1,800 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. RW Armstrong also provided the mas-ter plan design to fit all of this into the three-kilometer site. All buildings are targeted to achieve a 2 Pearl for Esti-dama sustainability rating.

The value of real estate proj-ects being developed by Aldar in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi is estimated at $75 billion. The entire portfolio is slated to be completed and delivered over a period of seven to ten years. Because of our excellent relationship with Aldar, we are confident that we can remain Al-dar’s key partner in delivering its vision for Yas Island and many other develop-ments.

RW Armstrong provided design and construction supervision of this

ACE Hardware store on Yas Island

welcome!The following new hires have joined us since our last news-letter. Say hello if you see them around!

Chris Hathaway,Indianapolis

Rick Perkins,Indianapolis

Mohamed Thabet,Abu Dhabi

We are all proud of your achievements!

Congratulations to Antonio Ceci and

Laurent Haddad! Antonio passed his LEED GA exam. And Laurent was shortlisted among the top six nominees

for the “Interior Designer of the Year Award”.

way to go,

laurent!

nice job, antonio!

If you have team, project, or individual news or successes you’d like to share with the entire company in a future newsletter issue,

please let us know! Send your ideas to Jennifer Voreis ([email protected]). We look forward to hearing what’s new!

got news?

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By Mary Felix

bring your lunch... and learn!

congratulations, john!

Starting in November, I will have the Learning Center open at lunch time for employees to bring their lunches and take a course online. Regional office employees may wish to do the same thing at their desks or maybe coordinate a group that would meet and take a course together. As with all courses, please discuss your plan with your supervisor to make sure your plan does not interfere with a project deadline or client requirement. Every employee has access 24/7 to 500+ courses on GeoLearning and 1,200+ on RedVector.

I recently attended a seminar hosted by RedVector. I had the opportunity to meet several of their staff and gain insight into their development plans for 2013. The goal of the seminar was for RedVec-tor clients and RedVector employees to exchange ideas that will meet each other’s needs. RedVector wants to provide training that employees need and they want it in an accessible, interactive format. Employers want to provide the training that will develop employees along their career paths and give the company a positive return on its investment.

I often receive requests for more MS Office 2010 training. At this semi-nar, I found a series of MS Office 2010 classes that might be of inter-est to many employees. They are from lynda.com, a series of video courses taught by industry experts, working professionals, and veteran teachers.

You can easily see what is being de-scribed during the session. The train-ing is very easy to follow online.

lynda.com is used by many universities, Disney, Time Warner, and Pixar to sup-plement their learning programs.

The table to the right lists the MS 2010 classes that are available on Red-Vector. I hope to see many employees taking the challenge to complete a course in November.

Course Code Title Hours

ST-0040AV Smart Office: Excel 2010 Essential Training 2

ST-0041AV Smart Office: Excel 2010 Essential Training II 2

ST-0045AV Smart Office: Outlook 2010 Essential Training 2

ST-0046AV Smart Office: Outlook 2010 Essential Training II 2

ST-0051AV Smart Office: Powerpoint 2010 Essential Training 2

ST-0052AV Smart Office: Powerpoint 2010 Essential Training II 2

ST-0047AV Smart Office: QuickBooks 2010 Essential Training 2

ST-0050AV Smart Office: QuickBooks 2010 Essential Training II 2

ST-0042AV Smart Office: Word 2010 Essential Training 2

ST-0043AV Smart Office: Word 2010 Essential Training II 2

By Jennifer Voreis

microsoft classes available on redvector through lynda.com

John Wujek, RW Armstrong’s Electrical Services Practice Leader, has been selected for the Executive Committee for the Illuminating Engineering Society—Aviation Lighting Commit-tee (IES-ALC). Serving on the executive committee, John will be Secretary in 2013, Vice Chairman in 2014, and Chairman in 2015. The mission of the IES-ALC is to study the application of light and lighting to spaces and functions involved in the operation of aircraft and spacecraft. The IES-ALC was started on October 21, 1929, under the Illuminating Engineering So-ciety of North America and is comprised of members from all aviation lighting specialities. It includes engineers, manu-facturers, designers, contractors, airport authorities, federal authorities (FAA and Transport Canada), U.S. and Canadian

military, and general aviation from North America and around the world. The IES-ALC com-mittee has provided technical leadership in the development of airfield lighting systems and standards. John has been a member of the IES-ALC commit-tee since 1998 and has been active in presenting papers and developing standards for the organization. Currently, John is the secretary for the Recommended Practices Technical Com-mittee developing IESNA-RP-37, “Recommended Practice for Outdoor Lighting for the Airport Environment”.

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chris ranck describes RW Armstrong’s role By Chris Ranckin an important regulatory amendment

Chris Ranck, P.E., BCEE, D.WRE, ENV PV, presented “Behind the $740M: Build-ing a Technical Consensus for Indianapolis Consent Decree Amendment No.2” at the 2012 Water Environmental Federation Annual Technical Conference (WEFT-EC) in New Orleans on October 1st. He also gave this presentation at the 2011 5-Cities Plus conference last year, and the WEF Collection Systems and Ohio WEA conferences earlier this year. A brief overview of the presentation follows.

The February, 2011, Engineering News Record article “With a Modified Consent Decree, Indianapolis Is Cleaning Up” provided a high-level summary of Amendment No.2 to the Indianapolis Consent Decree (CD), which reduced estimated combined sewer overflow (CSO) program costs by $740 million. The CD modification has been celebrated by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a “win-win” since it resulted in cost savings for the city and additional capture of CSO discharges. In order for approval by EPA, Indiana Department of Management (IDEM), and Department of Justice (DOJ) staff, it was necessary for Indianapolis to demonstrate better environmental benefits than the original CD that was entered in December 2006.

The technical basis for proving the environmental benefits to EPA, IDEM, and DOJ included:

� Hydraulic Modeling: A more-detailed model evaluation of the CSO system determined that average annual CSO volumes are approximately 30% lower than understood at the time of the original CD allowing for smaller wastewater facilities to achieve the same performance criteria.

� Sustainability: The accepted modifications to the CD included a more-sustainable plan from the standpoint of shifting CSO control measures away from shallow interceptors, in-line storage, pump stations, and treatment expansions, and towards storage facilities with a longer service life, better reliability, and lower electrical and chemical usage. It also provided less disruption to the environment. The addition of a deep rock tunnel was a primary change in the plan.

� Sewage Out Sooner: The accepted modifications to the CD included a lower average annual CSO discharge after full implementation than the original CD, and also allowed key projects to be accelerated to capture an additional 3.5 bil-lion gallons of CSO by full implementation.

RW Armstrong played an essential role in the CD amendment processes by providing all technical analysis for the hydraulic modeling, sustainability, and early capture of sewage.

Can you figure out this month’s puzzle? The answer will be revealed in the next newsletter.

?BRAIN TEASER

What is special about the following sequence of numbers?

8 5 4 9 1 7 6 10 3 2 0

8www.rwArmstrong.com

wellness challenge in south bend

On July 9, 2012, the South Bend office began its six-month wellness challenge to improve our overall health by means of diet, exercise, and mental health. Participants from the office were divided into three different teams:

� Elijah’s Wheels: Matt Gavelek – team leader, Mercy Sheeley, Susan Al-Abbas, Mike Voll

� Structurally Sound: Barbie Swihart Stutzman – team leader, Eric Geyer, Jennifer Hellyer, Michal Vereb

� Triple F: Mary Felix – team leader, Brian Arterbery, Jeremy Roschyk, Cynthia Bowen

Each team member selected their own weekly goals fo-cusing on diet, exercise, and mental health. Examples of goals include: running 12 miles a week, joining Weight Watchers, and setting aside family time. Each Monday, the previous week’s results are tallied, with a maximum of five points, and posted on the wellness board. Periodically, there’s an option to earn a bonus point if one completes a predetermined task, such as to not drink pop for an entire week. Every two months the goals are reassessed and revised, if necessary. Rewards will be given in three categories: team with highest average points and first and second individuals with most points.

After three months, we are seeing great results. Elijah’s Wheels are in the lead with 211 points, followed by Triple F with 168 points, and Structurally Sound with 153 points. Matt and Mercy are tied for first place with 58 points, and Susan and Cynthia are extremely close with 57 and 56 points, respectively.

By Mary Felix

Pictured (left to right): back row – Eric Geyer, Michael Vereb, Brian Arterbery, Jeremy Roschyk, Matt Gavelek, Susan Al-Abbas;

front row – Jennifer Hellyer, Mary Felix

ethics hotlineBy Jennifer Voreis

Just over two years ago, RW Armstrong made available an anonymous ethics hotline to all of its employees. The hotline’s purpose is to provide an anonymous way for em-ployees to report unethical actions they might observe but feel uncomfortable reporting to their supervisor or to the Human Resources Department.

Every employee should have a blue and white card and have a sign posted in their office that gives directions on how to submit an anonymous report. If you don’t have a card or don’t know where the poster is located in your of-fice, please contact Christina Bishop (North America) at [email protected] or ext. 114 or Manal Lewis (MENA) at [email protected] or 02.612.7724. Employees can submit a report online, they can email or they can call the Light-house Services hotline. All comments are completely anon-ymous.

The hotline should be used for such things as:

� Violations of Governmental Regulations

� Fraud

� Falsification/Destruction of Company Records

� Workplace Violence

� Substance Abuse

� Discrimination

� Sexual Harassment

� Conflicts of Interest

� Release of Proprietary Information

The importance of the anonymous ethics hotline is tre-mendous in RW Armstrong’s efforts to give each employee the right to be heard. The anonymity is the most important factor of this hotline and we want to make sure every em-ployee knows how to submit a report.

Please remember that your comments and input are important to the success of our organization.