CLIENT SERVICE AWARDS

ite Selection‘s editorial team took a new approach to selecting the 2006 winners of the Site Selection/William Dorsey Service Provider Awards. The result is a group of companies that might not have been in the running were it not for the reengineering of the process (see “Revised Methodology” box). Following is a rundown of the five winning companies’ road to the top.

   A. Epstein & Sons and/or the firm’s clients, find their way onto the pages of Site Selection in a range of contexts. The firm offers site selection, engineering and design, architecture, construction and other services to clients on a global scale. But it acts locally, as it did for Ruiz Food Products, when it needed to expand an operation in California. It turns out the right location was in north Texas for reasons explained in our November 2005 issue. Performance on the local level was key to that transaction. More recently, work done by the firm on Serta International’s new headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., was covered in the May 2006 issue. And the firm is also a leader in applying LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards to industrial development.

   Law firm Baker & Mackenzie stood out from the pack for two reasons – it’s strength as a global advisor in a global marketplace and its client- service track record. The firm was central to Dell Inc.’s establishment of a second European manufacturing plant, in a special economic zone in Lodz, Poland. Other examples are too numerous to name, but intellectual property (IP) work the firm is doing is Asia won it the Asia- Pacific IP Firm of the Year for the third consecutive year. The award is organized by the publication AsiaLaw and Practice, a subsidiary of Euromoney PLC. Speaking of IP, Hong Kong and London- based partner Jeannie Smith won the 2006 International Trademark Assoc. President’s Award, the first woman outside the U.S. to receive it.

   As for client service, Baker & Mackenzie ranked fifth in a study of 30 law firms by the BTI Consulting Group that looks at delivery of client service from the perspective of Fortune 500 companies and large organizations. Also, the firm won the International Law Office (ILO) Client Choice International Law Firm Award. And for the second consecutive year was named best law firm in China, where it employs more than 200 lawyers, based on ILO’s survey of senior corporate counsels from 34 jurisdictions worldwide.

   Looking at the size of the contracts awarded to global engineering and construction giant Fluor Corp., it’s hard not to recognize the company’s contribution to global infrastructure development in the still- new millennium. Other companies bring similar heft to the table, but Fluor got the nod for work it’s doing on behalf of Site Selection readers as well as for the superprojects it launched in 2006. These include: Work it is doing with American Bridge Co. on construction of the 1,800- ft. (167- m.) self- anchored swww.fwuspension segment of the San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge for Caltrans; a US$2.2 billion contract for engineering and construction management for the utilities and offsite facilities of Saudi Kayan’s petrochemical complex in Al- Jubail, Saudi Arabia; and program and construction management, engineering, procurement and other services it is delivering to BP Products North America in the $3- billion upgrade of it’s Canadian Heavy Crude Refinery in Whiting, Ind.

   A different twist on the motivation behind Fluor’s award is at work in recognizing Foster Wheeler’s work on major projects globally. And that is to recognize the complexities of managing large projects in the world’s emerging markets, in the industrial sense. To be sure, it works with local partners in most cases who are familiar with local sand traps on the project course. But to a large extent it is up To Foster Wheeler to get the work done on time. Among the company’s far- flung assignments under way at various divisions in 2006 are a $12 million contract for the design of two 150- Megawatt circulating fluidized- bed steam generators for a power station in Cam Pha, Vietnam; a front- end engineering and project management contract for PTT Public Company’s sixth gas separation plant in Rayong, Thailand; technology consultancy services for a new petrochemical complex in Gujarat, India; a revamp of the Mazeikiai refinery in Lithuania; and an engineering and design contract for a complex of refining and petrochemical plants in the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia.

   As was profiled in the July 2006 Missouri Spotlight, Holcim (US) Inc. is in the midst of a $905- million project to build a new cement plant on the banks of the Mississippi River, in Ste. Genevieve County, Mo. Part of MC Industrial’s and T.E. Ibberson’s role is construction of 13 slip- formed silos. MC Industrial is a subsidiary of McCarthy Building Companies, St. Louis. The joint venture began work in late 2006 on a 16- day, around- the- clock concrete pour on the first two of the silos. According to MC Industrial, it took three hours and 140 yards (128 meters) of concrete to fill the forms for the two 60- foot (18- m.) in diameter by 275- foot (84- m.) high silos. As slip forming gets under way, concrete will pour at a rate of 33 yards (30 m.) per hour, 24 hours per day, until all 6,015 yards (5,500 meters) are poured. No wonder there is a worldwide shortage of concrete.