Rick Weddle (Site Selectors Guild): Welcome to "Site Selection Matters," where 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. We speak with members of the Site Selectors Guild, our economic development partners, and corporate decision-makers to provide you with deep insight into the best and next practices in our profession.

In this episode, we have as our guest Larry Moretti, principal with LFM Corporate Solutions. With over 30 years of professional experience, Larry focuses on global location strategies and site selection across all industry platforms, corporate real estate advisory services, economic development, and program management. Today, Larry will talk with us about the location strategy decision chain. More specifically, Larry will help us unpack and understand what goes into the decision process? Who was involved in the decision and how it works in practice? Join me as we welcome Larry Moretti to "Site Selection Matters."

Rick: Larry, thanks for joining us today and helping us understand the location decision process from the inside out. Why don't you start by giving our listeners your perspective on the strategy decision chain and what's required for a successful decision path?

Larry Moretti (LFM Corporate Solutions): Well, thanks, Rick. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you today. It's interesting having done projects like that, site selection projects for many years, I have seen a pattern I'm sure my colleagues do as well. I mean, the bottom line is the successful project for expanding, consolidating a relocating a company's geographic footprint, they all share a common grounding. They're guided by a logical defendable process to build a business case and to guide that decision. And this is often based on, or always I would say based on underlying business need and the project success factors.

So, you know, really important dimension there, in addition to all of the value developments of a citing selection, it's having a clear project management communications and decision structure. And this structure constitutes what I would call a supply and demand decision chain of corporate site selection and economic development. And, you know, this decision involves a couple of categories, I would say three categories in total. One I would call the demand side, then there's a supply side, kind of makes sense, and then the third is a group in between that that evaluates or otherwise influences the decision.

So the views and motivations of each of these groups towards alternatives solutions and factors of importance is going to vary, but the underlying process needs to be grounded in project objectives, but it also has to be flexible enough to anticipate actions and reactions to each of these parties. So, it's really, really important for the roles of these key groups to be established and how they fit into the process upfront early in the process. So truly a classic exercise in project management, and we'll go into some of the details.

Rick: Very, very interesting. Larry, moving or changing a corporate location, a facility if you will, is clearly a big decision impacting the whole company most likely. As such, I would expect that a lot of different people or stakeholders inside the company would want to have a say or do have a say in that process. Who do you consider to be the key parties in that decision chain from the company or the demand side?

Larry: Stepping back a