Site Selectors Guild

Rick Weddle: 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 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 or 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 Gigerich, executive managing director with Ginovus, one of the nation’s leading site selection and location advisory firms. Today, Larry will talk with us about the importance of water resources in economic growth and development. Join me as we welcome Larry Gigerich to Site Selection Matters.

Larry, arguably, water has become the most important natural resource for communities and states. And the impact on economic development is significant. Take a minute if you will and unpack this a bit for our listeners. Why is it so important and why is it becoming so important now?

Larry Gigerich: Yeah, I think as you look at it, Rick, and you think about economic and community development in the U.S., and for that matter globally, you know, water and the ability to access water has become critically important, even more so than in the past. And I think maybe the best way to frame this issue up is to really divide it into two pieces. The first being water that is specifically required to support a company’s operations and the second part being water availability to support people living and working in the geographic area. They’re different, but yet connected. And I think as you think about it, you know, water is required for certain types of industrial primarily projects, as you think about it. So, things like food and beverage manufacturing, data centers, chemical productions, some steel and metal products, things like that where you have to have water as a part of your process.

And, you know, if you have an area that can’t meet those availability statistics or numbers, in particular, that’s an issue. And then the second piece is, and I think this is maybe one of the really interesting things that we’ve seen develop over the past couple of years is, the corporate decision-makers are really emphasizing ensuring that water is in available in those communities and states where they look to allocate tower. Where they’re going to put those resources of people because they want to make sure people living in that area are in a position, you know, whether it’s from a quality of place or just general everyday life, that they’re in a place where there’s water that’s available. Because I think that’s going to become even more important as we go forward and decision-makers are starting to look at that.

Rick: Two big reasons and we’ll jump into that. So, we get it now, really that water’s important. Obviously, without water we can’t exist and, of course, it’s important for, as you noted, many industrial processes. But now you’re suggesting the second point that corporate decision-makers are really beginning to look at it differently and considering the availability of water when looking at potential facility locations on a broader basis. Explain this if you will.

Larry: Absolutely. So, now, you know, with that second focus that has emerged, you know, again ensuring that when they put talent resources in different geographic areas, that water is available not only to meet the needs of that area today, bu

Rick Weddle (Site Selectors Guild): Welcome to Site Selection Matters, where we take a closer look at the art and science of site selection decision-making. I’m your host, Rick Weddle, president in 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, Dennis Donovan, a principal with Wadley Donovan Gutshaw Consulting, one of the nation’s leading site selection and location advisory firms. Today, Dennis will talk with us about how EDOs or economic developers can work to position their communities in the post-pandemic era. Join me as we welcome Dennis Donovan to Site Selection Matters.

Dennis, in this post-pandemic era, it seems like communities, just like companies, should be reassessing their competitive situation and their target industry focus to make sure they’re positioned correctly going forward. Is this correct? Do you see it that way?

Dennis Donovan (Wadley Donovan Gutshaw Consulting): Yes, I do. You know, this is really a continuation. I mean, it’s what I call continuous product improvement. Continuous business improvement should always be looking at the assets and liabilities that the community has to offer, and what that holds for the future, and how you rank vis-a-vis the competition. So I think that’s key. And one of…you know, in terms of competitive positioning, coming out of the pandemic, without any question, the number one consideration in terms of how successful a community will be from a retention expansion and a recruitment standpoint is the talent pool. I have never seen, even in the heydays, before the Great Recession, a tighter labor market that we’ve had today. Now, there’s change, there are differences around the country. It’s not uniform. But there are significant challenges. And they stretch from qualified entry-level through semi-skilled through skilled and certain professional positions as well.

So documenting in areas labor market resources, especially as they relate to the target industries, is going to be vitally important. And let me tell you, Rick, one of the challenges that I see not being adequately met, I do not see enough workforce assessment that is demand-driven, that we’re just taking stock of what the demand for certain skills are now and in the future. And I see too much in terms of communities and workforce development focusing on jobs. We need to be focusing on skills, the skills required, and then that leads into certain occupations or jobs. So this is gonna be really important, the demand-based, skills-based within your target industries and overall, and then I would say, you know, we hear all about upskilling and so forth. And that is true. But believe me, because of technology, there are going to be portion of the workforce that may not be able to participate fully in the post-COVID recovery. So we need to have a training aimed at not only the marginalized but at those at greatest risk of being displaced. And they can be upskilled to form bottom of the foundation for companies that are gonna require entry-level labor.

So this is a new paradigm here. And we don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of redesigning, we do it very quickly. So holistic collaborations of educators, government, business really needs to be business-led. It’s going to be key in terms of making sure that we have a workforce that can sustain

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 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 a deep insight into the best and next practices in our profession.

In this episode, we have as our guest, Bob Hess, vice chairman, Newmark Global Corporate Services and practice lead for its global site selection platform. Today, Bob will talk with us about diversity and inclusion as a business imperative in corporate site selection. Join me today as we welcome Bob Hess to Site Selection Matters. Bob, we hear a lot today about the evolving importance of diversity and inclusion to business. Take a minute or two if you will to describe exactly what’s meant by that when we referenced diversity and inclusion as a corporate concern, and maybe how this issue has evolved over time.

Bob Hess (Newmark): Thanks, Rick. I’ve been looking forward to the podcast today. It’s a topic that’s been part of my business life and my personal life for many, many years, and it has evolved over time. I mean, there’s a really interesting temporal time component to diversity, and it was awareness back in the, I’ll call it ’70s and ’80s more from a business perspective, obviously, the ’60s, you had social moments, you know, to a concern. And then it moved into a business imperative and then action, various levels of action I think that are starting, and, of course, it’s always been about talent, right?

So this evolution diversity has been about talent attraction, development, and retention, but we’ve come at this talent issue from a diversity perspective, you know, many different ways. And one of the issues that I think that’s impacted diversity is, you know, boardroom directors and how important it is there. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, it wasn’t prevalent in the boardroom. It was left to the boards to interpret this, but there really wasn’t a lot of understanding of it in terms of how you measure it. And, of course, fast forward to the ’80s and the ’90s, I was actually part of a diversity initiative, which more than diversity initiatives came into play in the ’90s, when I was at a Big Four firm.

I was actually a new partner and I was asked to lead the diversity initiative for about 2,500 people in a region of the country. It was one of the more wonderful honors of my life to be involved with that. And at that time, it was about, okay, the business case and making people understand the dimensions of diversity, which are beyond, you know, age and race and ethnicity. They get into class and values and even thinking styles and working styles. You know, that was the discussion, and it may be more accelerated for tech firms and other types of firms, public firms, but then the accelerators happened. These speaking of this timeline, these accelerators and catalysts for the last couple of years and recently, you know, the human experience, social justice, obviously Black Lives Matter and other external stakeholders, climate change, politics, and the labor market again, the war for talent.

The war for talent has always been central to diversity and inclusion and even ESG these days. And the last thing I’ll say about, you know, this evolution, even the word diversity has evolved. It was diversity, right, for a while, then it w

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 of 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, Andrew Deye, vice president of Strategy for JobsOhio, the lead statewide agency for economic development and job growth in Ohio. Today, Andrew will talk with us about the role talent plays in fueling business opportunities and innovation across the state of Ohio. Please join me as we welcome Andrew Deye to Site Selection Matters.

Andrew, your title is vice president of Strategy for JobsOhio. What an interesting role that describes. Take a minute or two if you will, tell our listeners a little bit about exactly what JobsOhio is, maybe what it does.

Andrew Deye (JobsOhio): Well, Rick, thank you for the opportunity. JobsOhio is Ohio’s private economic development corporation, and like the Site Selectors Guild, we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary this year. Relative to other state economic development organizations, we’re unique in a number of ways, but let me highlight three. First, our private structure, we’re a private non-profit with a team of industry experts that support businesses with their growth projects that allows us to keep information confidential until the point of announcement. Second, we have a stable funding source. Back in 2013, a 25-year franchise of the state’s liquor enterprise was executed that provides us stable funding through ups and downs. And third, we have statewide coverage, JobsOhio operates with six regional partners, a team in Northeast Ohio, one Columbus, REDI Cincinnati, the Dayton Development Coalition, Regional Growth Partnership Northwest Ohio and Ohio Southeast. We were proud that Cincinnati was the host of the Site Selectors Guild Annual Conference in 2018, and hope you’ll continue to keep an eye on the exciting developments in Ohio.

Rick: Well, thank you, Andrew. Thanks for sharing that background on JobsOhio. I think you got my attention when you said stable funding source. I think that speaks to the leadership of the state of Ohio to have an understanding that economic development works best when you can kind of find a line and work it and stay on top of it. So, congratulations to you and the leadership of the state of Ohio for hanging there for 10 years with that stable funding source. I’m sure your partners really appreciate that too?

Andrew: Well, ultimately all projects are local, and so we think the three parts, you know, JobsOhio, our regional partner, and our local communities, and ultimately this is always about solving a client opportunity or problem, talent solutions, real estate solutions, and we look forward to continuing to serve clients this year and beyond.

Rick: Let me follow up on that, you mentioned talent. One of the most important elements of business investment and site selection decisions really is talent or talent-related. How does Ohio stand or compare today on the issue of talent? What are you doing or going to do specifically to build on your talent ba

Rick: 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, Jay Garner, president and founder of Garner Economics and chair of the Site Selectors Guild. Today, Jay will talk with us about the state of site selection and the Guild. More specifically, Jay joins us to share his unique insights regarding the major top-of-mind questions impacting our economy as we come out of the pandemic and head into what we hope to be a strong and significant economic recovery. Join me as we welcome Jay Garner to Site Selection Matters.

Jay, to kick us off today, why don’t you take a minute and give our listeners a brief update on the state of the Site Selectors Guild? One of the Guild’s founding members and its current chair in this important 10th year anniversary year. I think you have a unique perspective and one that would be of great interest to our listeners. So, where are we today?

Jay: Hey, Rick, thanks so much for having me. And I’m always thrilled to talk about the Guild. I’m passionate about the Guild since I was blessed to be one of the founders. So, you know, we’re having our annual conference coming up in June and I’m calling that just informally, you know, not with any fanfare but I’m calling it the 11, 10 celebration. So, what does that mean? Well, the Guild will be 11 years old this July. We were founded in July of 2010. We had our first annual conference in Orlando 10 years ago. So, we’re basically having the 10th anniversary of our first conference. So, that’s why I’m, you know, just to put a little spin on it and I’m calling it the 11, 10 celebration.

Rick: That’s really interesting. I mean, that has a nice little alliteration. The Guild’s in great shape coming out of this pandemic.

Jay: It is. A lot of people have helped make it that way. You being one of them as our president and CEO. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, we did what any well-managed, well-led organization would do to sustain itself and we did a pivot. The Guild was basically an organization that relied primarily on our two conferences to sustain itself. Our annual conference and another conference, a smaller one that we call the Fall Forum. And those were good, and they still are good, but we needed to diversify our services and our products.

And so we created a business plan that we called Guild Forward and it was a multi-year business plan that did just that. It diversified our product services and even took it a little step further and then allowed us to focus on other issues regarding our thought content, thought leadership, and then more of an internal focus on what we call executed effectively. So, we added a number of products and services. We added webinars that have been exceptionally well attended. At our in-person conferences, we had a little tool that we called Table Talk, where we got to network with all of the economic development friends that came to our conferences.

We started doing that virtually

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 or 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, Chris Lloyd, senior vice president and director of infrastructure and economic development with McGuireWoods Consulting, a leader in the practice of location advisory services and economic development. Today, Chris will talk with us about the American Rescue Plan, where specifically Chris will discuss just what the plan means for the economic development community going forward. Join me as we welcome Chris Lloyd to Site Selection Matters.

Chris, as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re starting to see some of the real impacts of the various federal stimulus plans adopted to help restart the economy. Now we even have a new one, the recently approved American Rescue Plan. To get us started if you will, take a minute or two, help our listeners understand what all is really included in the American Rescue Plan.

Chris Lloyd (McGuireWoods Consulting): Sure, Rick. And again, thanks for hosting us and inviting me to be a part of this today. You know, as you outlined, Rick, you know, this is not the first and nor will it probably be the last federal stimulus plan to come out of Congress. And I know we’re going to talk later about the potential American jobs plan, the infrastructure plan that the Biden administration has floated, but you know what we’ve got here in the American Rescue Plan, which was passed, you know, within the first month of the new administration is $1.9 trillion. Yes, that’s trillion with a T dollars that’s going to flow from Washington to the states and through various federal agencies for a variety of purposes.

What makes this program a little bit different from the CARES Act or some of the earlier stimulus plans adopted by Congress is that while there’s certainly an overlay and a theme that runs through this money that links it to the COVID pandemic and recovery from it, there’s a little bit more flexibility with regards to how this money is used by the states and the federal agencies in that, a lot of those earlier packages were exclusively tied to reimbursing expenses incurred by impacted small businesses, by local and state governments related to PPE expenses, related to overtime for personnel for running vaccination clinics, for running COVID testing.

And while there’s certainly money in the new America’s rescue plan for those expenses as well, there are a number of programs here that really do have an economic development nexus that I think that, you know, many of the listeners of this podcast will be interested in and thinking about how we can use that money for an economic development purpose. You know, starting at the high level of the $1.9 trillion, you first and foremost, you’ve got $219 billion is going directly to states, $130 million goes directly to localities for allocation. There’s $10 billion allocated in a Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, which is for each state gets at least $100 million for capital projects that are related to work or education or health monitoring related to COVID-19. You’ve got money set aside for travel assistance. You’ve got $4 billion going to USDA.

You’

Rick Weddle: 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 Gigerich, executive managing director of Ginovus, one of the nation’s leading location advisory firms. Today, Larry will talk with us about infrastructure. More specifically, Larry will discuss how a national infrastructure plan can position the U.S. for long-term economic development growth. Join me as we welcome Larry Gigerich to Site Selection Matters.

Rick: Larry, today we’re going to be talking about infrastructure, and more specifically, a national plan for infrastructure. But before we jump into the details, why don’t you take a minute, if you will, explain to our listeners exactly what is meant by this word infrastructure?

Larry Gigerich: Well, absolutely, Rick, and great to be with you as always. In my mind, infrastructure is really a physical asset as you think about. It’s something that’s required to support residential, commercial, and industrial development. So I think about things like roads, rail lines, water, sewer, natural gas, electric, broadband. Those kinds of issues are really key underpinnings to economic development and are physical in nature. You know, without it, businesses can’t operate, individuals can’t live their lives. They’re all things that are important to what we all do day-to-day, and we really need certainly a national plan to help us enhance our infrastructure in our country. It’s something that is important. Again, serves as a key underpinning for economic development over the long-term, and it’s something, honestly, we’ve neglected for a few decades as a country in the U.S. and something needs to be addressed.

Rick: You know, Larry with that definition as a baseline, physical infrastructure, you’ve explained that very well kind of what it is. Take a minute, if you can, help us understand why infrastructure development as a process is so important to economic development, and as a follow-up, why a national plan seems to be the right way to go.

Larry: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, again, as I think about infrastructure and those physical assets, it’s really important for economic development as it relates to being able to either develop or redevelop sites or buildings, you know, having the things in place that you need to. You know, as I always say, it’s kind of like when you think about infrastructure, you know, when you throw on the light switch and your lights come on, you turn on a faucet, water comes out, you don’t necessarily think about that infrastructure and what it takes to get it to your business, to your home every day until you don’t have access to, until you turn the light switch and the lights don’t come on or turn on the faucet, no water comes out, then it becomes a crisis. So I think that the importance of a national plan, especially one that ends up being focused on physical infrastructure is really important. Again, we’ve not seen anything concentrated, probably close to 30 years now, and we’ve seen a lot of aging of our existing infrastructure, let alone the technological adva

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 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 Courtney Fingar, editor-in-chief of Investment Monitor, a part of New Statesman Media Group, with a mission of explaining how the world is changing for decision-makers in need of data-driven answers. Today, Courtney will talk with us about foreign direct investment or FDI. More specifically, Courtney will share with us about FDI trends and the macro factors driving them. What an interesting and relevant topic for today’s discussion. Join me as we welcome Courtney Fingar to “Site Selection Matters.” Courtney, before we get into the weeds of foreign direct investment or FDI as a topic, take a minute, if you will, and tell us about the “Investment Monitor.”

Courtney Fingar (Investment Monitor): Well, first of all, thanks very much for having me. “Investment Monitor” is a new publication that was launched in September 2020. It’s digital-only, and it’s free to read and access. So, I hope all the listeners will check it out. Our audience that we’re targeting would be senior decision-makers at multinational companies and those who influence their decisions, so that, of course, would include site selection advisors. But, of course, it could be interesting for anyone in the broader FDI ecosystem. We consider ourselves to be data-led. So, we are trying to sort through all the vast amounts of data out there that relate to FDI and help our readers make sense of them. I come to the publication from a relatively long career at Financial Times, formerly running fDi Magazine there, and I’ve been joined at Investment Monitor by about 10 other colleagues from there. And we’re just looking to build something new, and we felt there was a gap in the market that we’re trying to serve.

Rick: Well, that’s great. It sounds like a great opportunity at a really interesting time. You know, 2020 was wow, quite a year as we faced the first global pandemic in at least our lifetimes. One area that was impacted by the pandemic was global investment or FDI hugely. By some estimates, the total of foreign investment fell by over 40% maybe in 2020. Take a minute if you will and help us unpack that fact or data, as you would say, and explain why our listeners should be concerned with it.

Courtney: Yes, it was a highly disruptive year, and the data charts are pretty ugly when we start to look around what happened last year. And it’s arguably the most difficult situation for FDI in decades. And that would even include the big collapses that we saw after the global financial crisis more than a decade ago. Now, the collapse is not uniform. There were some sectors that have continued to perform relatively well, and they are not surprising ones like healthcare and ICT. And a few countries are outliers. We saw increases in China and India, for example. But apart from those few bright spots, we saw declines in every mode of FDI. So, we saw declines

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, Didi Caldwell, principal with Global Location Strategies, one of the world's leading site selection consultancies for manufacturing and industrial companies. Today Didi will talk with us about how community or state action to combat climate change is emerging as an increasingly important site location factor. Join me as we welcome Didi Caldwell to "Site Selection Matters."

Didi, the interest in sustainability is clearly escalating. The new administration's push for climate change programs, renewable energy jobs, plus the recent announcement by BlackRock chief, Laurence Fink, calling for companies to actually disclose plans on how they'll support a net-zero economy all seem to reinforce this point. Take a minute, if you will, to help our listeners understand why this is important, specifically to site location, and what a net-zero economy actually means.

Didi Caldwell (Global Location Strategies): Thank you, Rick. It's great to be here with you. We've seen an increasing interest from our clients in net-zero and other sustainability goals over the last, I would say decade. Net-zero essentially means achieving a balance between the greenhouse gases that we put into the atmosphere and those that are taken out so that we can achieve a net-zero emissions. It differs from gross zero, in that gross zero would mean that we're trying to take out all carbon dioxide emissions, which is, I think most people would agree, is not achievable with today's technology. But net-zero accounts for our ability to take out greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere through nature or through other technologies.

Rick: So that would mean we're not making it worse, right? If you're at net zero, it's do no harm, kind of.

Didi: Exactly. And the widely accepted increase in temperature that we can achieve... We have to get to net-zero in order to achieve an overall warming of 2 degrees Celsius or less. That's what the scientists are telling us, that we need to in order to avoid major environmental damage and beyond social and all kinds of other things that scientists are telling us that degrees Celsius is about where that threshold is. And in order to achieve that, we really need to get to net-zero and as quickly as possible.

Rick: You know, there's a lot of details and a lot of substance to be understood and learned in this. But, you know, we've been talking about global warming and climate change for a long time now, some more intensely, some less intensely, but some of us actually remember back when Al Gore first raised the conscious level with the release of the movie, "Inconvenient Truth." Why do you think it's coming to the forefront now, after all these years?

Didi: Well, there's a couple of reasons. I mean, one thing is that was sort of a call-to-action, but we really didn't have the technologies, at least not at a price point where we could implement those technologies back when "I

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