A few words from Gary and Cyrus
It’s hard to believe we are halfway through 2019! It feels like yesterday that we were celebrating our 90th anniversary, but time moves, and quickly at that too.
This summer marks a change for Connections. For the first time, we are publishing an electronic edition. Although Connections has always been a responsibly printed magazine, given this issue’s focus on sustainability and energy conservation, it seemed appropriate to adjust the format.
In the stories that follow, we cover several significant trends in the market and delve into details about our signature projects – projects such as Palomar Community College’s award-winning M&O facility, which has met the toughest criteria of the Living Building Challenge; and the LEED Platinum bioengineering center at UC Santa Barbara. Our experts also discuss WELL Building certification, net-zero strategies, energy-efficient buildings, and the use of innovative analytics to achieve LEED for data centers.
We’ll also provide brief overviews of important developments at Syska. For example, we’re honored to have won this year’s Diamond Award from the ACEC for the JP Morgan Chase Legacy West Project in Dallas. And we’ll report on our SENSE and SHAPE employee groups, which are as active as ever. SENSE (Syska Employee Network for Support and Education) recently visited a children’s hospital and spent the day volunteering – creating arts and crafts projects with the patients. The network’s members have also developed technical programs to benefit all staff.
Our SHAPE (Syska Hennessy Advocating Professional Equality) team just held its first-ever summit in our New York office. The focus of the summit was to promote diversity and inclusion. To celebrate the summit, our team created a video that showcases the diversity of buildings, as reflected by our people.
This year, we also produced a report on our Vision 2025 plan, introducing an updated strategy map to ensure that we are on track to attain our established goals. You will see an overview that explains more about this initiative.
And finally, every issue is about people. None of this is possible without our hard-working team members and dedicated clients. Since the last issue of Connections was published, we promoted a group of employees to associate partner and hired several outstanding additions to the Syska team. We also held our first inaugural Vision Awards program to recognize the best in our projects and people.
It’s usually calm in summer, isn’t it? Not at Syska! But we hope you’ll realize as you read on that we’re happy to be busy because we love what we do. Enjoy!