CIANJ Commerce Magazine September 2020 Live | Page 36

■ Annual Best Practices Guide
Continued From Page 32
ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS AND ENGINEERING
Boswell Engineering
By Stephen T. Boswell, Ph.D.,
PE, SECB, LSRP,
President and CEO
Unlike many other businesses,
Boswell Engineering was
deemed an essential business
so we continued to work throughout the crisis.
As a high-tech company, the overwhelming
majority of our staff was able to work remotely,
while we still maintained a minimum
cadre in the office. Office space was modified
in order to assure proper social distancing
and temperature checks were required for
everyone entering the building. Employees
were also required to wear a mask when moving
throughout the office, and entry into the
building was banned to all non- employees.
All of this was done to protect the health and
safety of our valued employees. Daily department
head conference calls were instituted
and hundreds of meetings were conducted by
video conference. Our dedicated employees
proved to be up to the challenge by doing an
outstanding job and maintaining a high degree
of efficiency during this crisis.
Brilliant Environmental
Services, LLC
By Philip I. Brilliant, CHMM,
LSRP, Owner, Principal
Environmental Scientist
COVID‐19 just added to the
challenges of a small business
owner dealing with the struggles of doing
business in our current business climate. I
am always reinventing ways of improving or
maintaining our work culture at Brilliant and
making sure clients and staff are equally #1.
Over the past six months, we held virtual staff
meetings every Friday and on one occasion
I surprised the staff with home delivery of a
pizza lunch. I did the same with a prospective
client in the Chicago area and several clients. I
wanted to bring the feeling of business as usual,
when we know it is very unusual. Thinking
out of the box daily has helped Brilliant satisfy
clients and helped me retain staff.
EAI, Inc.
By Robert Carvalho, PG,
President and CEO
EAI’s best practice continues
to be superior service. What
is new is the additional use
of cell phones and texts that
all customers now have for staff in addition
to office lines. Our staff has been working remotely
for many years, and this requires the
latest technology—which EAI has and will
continue to invest in. In an overwhelming
news cycle and political climate that thrives
on fear tactics, level heads must prevail. We
live and work in the best country and state.
We have very strong businesses, healthcare
facilities and higher education institutions.
New Jersey became one of the first states and
will continue on as we have throughout history—a
success story. The best practice is to use
dependable, reliable and trustworthy sources
when evaluating the COVID‐19 situation.
ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS AND ENGINEERING
Envision
Environmental, Inc.
By Mark Roman,
President
We have helped our individual
clients and the wider business
community respond to
the COVID‐19 crisis in several ways. Because
many clients have been short-staffed, we have
provided support for required reporting and
monitoring that they used to do in-house so
they can meet regulatory deadlines and maintain
an uncheckered compliance history. As a
complimentary service, we’ve helped clients
understand what various federal, state and
local regulators expect during this pandemic
in terms of environmental requirements and
regulatory deadlines. Many are surprised to
find out that many regulators have not loosened
the reins at all, and we help them stay
in compliance. We’ve provided help in modifying
workspaces and processes to maintain
social distancing and incorporating necessary
PPE. Our team released a podcast offering
tips for working from home effectively and
followed up personally with listeners who had
specific challenges and questions.
34 COMMERCE www. commercemagnj.com
GEI Consultants, Inc.
By Ron Palmieri,
PE, CEO
Responding compassionately
and effectively to COVID‐19
has been one of the most difficult
and daunting challenges
faced by our employees and management
team. During the pandemic, our principal
focus has been the safety of our colleagues,
clients, subcontractors and vendors. We acted
quickly and proactively to close our offices
and implement social distancing and medical
monitoring policies that closely align with
CDC and local government guidelines. Additionally,
our staff remained fully engaged
with their clients and continued to provide
the types of cost-effective and creative levels
of engineering and environmental services
for which GEI is well known. As the country
struggles through this ongoing crisis, GEI is
constantly adapting, modifying and improving
our project delivery methods so as to help
clients move forward with accomplishing
their goals within this new, more restrictive
business paradigm.
J.S. Held LLC
By John M. Brennan,
Senior Vice President
Prior to COVID‐19, our firm
joined J.S. Held, transitioning
from a Northeast regional
environmental consulting
firm to a global consulting firm. J.S. Held has
thrived during this difficult time using industry-leading
technology and complementary
areas of expertise including COVID-related
services supported by our industrial hygienists
and Ph.D. epidemiologists. Although the
entire company has been working remotely
since March, we’ve continued to provide enhanced
data through virtual walkthroughs
on projects using our 360-inspection tool. We
can document sites—from residential properties
to commercial buildings on different
properties with multiple floors—in one report,
and add follow-up inspection images with
time-lapse capability to show progress on
projects. This capability has allowed our staff
to work remotely, to safely serve clients, and
to continue to deliver the news, one of our
core values. Our company also created special
teams’ channels so all employees can connect
with each other.
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