Rick: Welcome to Site Selection Matters, where each week we take a close look at the art and science of site selection decision-making. I’m your host, Rick Weddle, president of the Site Selectors Guild. In each episode, we introduce you to leaders in the world of corporate site selection and economic development to provide you with key insight into the best and next practices in our profession.

This year, we’ve been on a bit of a roller coaster with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the wide range of corporate and government responses. While much remains uncertain, one thing seems clear, how we assess corporate risk related to economic vulnerability and location resilience will likely be forever changed. As we work our way through this pandemic, important questions are being asked, how will companies assess risk? How will a given country, state, region, or city response impact the company’s view of them for future projects? Is this a situation that will eventually settle down and return to business as usual, or will we see an entirely new dimension of risk assessment? That’s the premise or question that will guide today’s discussion with our distinguished panel of professional site selectors and location advisers.

In this episode of Site Selection Matters, we have as our guest, Mark Williams, president of the Strategic Development Group, Angelos Angelou, founder and principal executive officer of AngelouEconomics, Von Hatley, managing director of Jones Walker Consulting, Jerry Szatan, owner of Szatan & Associates, Ken Maly, senior managing director for location strategy with Newmark, and Seth Martindale, senior managing director of CBRE. Together, this group of thought leaders will share their informed insights on how resilience will impact location projects in the future. Join me as we welcome this distinguished panel to Site Selection Matters.

Well, let’s get started with a question to Mark Williams. Mark, what are your initial thoughts on corporate risk assessment of economic vulnerability and resilience in today’s COVID-19 or post-pandemic environment?

Mark: Hey, Rick. You know, corporate risk assessment has been a critical part of site location analysis since the beginning of time. And part of any legitimate selection project involves analysis of all kinds of risks, general business risk, geotechnical risk, labor risks, weather risks. There have been so many over the years and some clients are more concerned about certain risks than others based on their operation. And COVID-19, from my perspective, really lays out two new layers of consideration in terms of corporate risk. And really, the first is I think is going to be a tendency to more capital intensity and automation. As we know, there’s a great deal of concern about employees, the proximity of employees working next to each other. And I really think that’s going to be a permanent risk, an ongoing risk, something that’s going to be considered. So in the midst of automation, it was occurring. I think it’s going to accelerate because that’s an element of the COVID-19 risk.

The second thing is the community risk. And I think the Tesla example you