Foresite Group

Foresite Group Welcomes New Transportation Division Director!

2011-11-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

Please join us in welcoming Foresite Group’s new Transportation Division Director, John Karnowski! John is a Professional Engineer in several states across the Southeast and Texas, and offers over 20 years of experience in transportation, planning, and engineering. He is also a PTOE and an AICP with extensive knowledge in transportation planning, traffic engineering, roadways, traffic signals, safety, ITS, and intersection design.

Foresite Group is a full-service engineering, planning, landscape architecture, and design firm headquartered in Norcross, Georgia with branch offices in Auburn, Alabama and Tampa, Florida. The firm provides comprehensive consulting services to public and private clients throughout the country.

Foresite Group’s practices include:

Foresite Group offers various transportation services, including traffic forecasting, roadway and intersection design, traffic signal design, timing, and operations, intelligent transportation systems, transportation planning, traffic simulation. Learn more about Foresite Group and all our services by visiting our website at www.foresitegroupinc.com!

Foresite Group to present at National TRB Annual Meeting

2011-11-11T13:51:00.004-05:00

Chris Rome, Transportation Project Manager with Foresite Group will be attending the Transportation Research Board(TRB) Annual Meeting 2012 in Washington, D.C. this January to present his paper entitled “Emissions and Idling of the Cobb County School District Buses.”

TRB’s Annual Meeting program covers all transportation modes, with more than 4,000 presentations in nearly 650 sessions and workshops addressing topics of interest to all 11,000 attendees: policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.

Chris's paper was developed under the effort of an ARRA-funded $1.3 million dollar contract awarded to Cobb County School District (CCSD) and Georgia Tech for development, creation, testing, and deployment of a control system to reduce the amount of idling of CCSD buses. The paper uses the latest national emission model to develop estimates of the emission and greenhouse gas savings, as well as fuel savings. The emission model used second-by-second vehicle activity data collected from over 200 in-use GPS units, which were manufactured by and installed in CCSD buses by Georgia Tech. The speed and acceleration of the vehicles were used to categorize the calculations by operating mode to maximize the accuracy of the estimates. The paper was submitted to TRB’s Transportation and Air Quality Committee (ADC20) and was recommended for presentation. One reviewer noted: “This is an excellent paper partially due to its tight focus, but also do to the high quality execution of the research. I commend the authors on a very fine piece of research.”

The presentation will be completed in a session titled: “Current Environmental Issues in Transportation” on Tuesday, January 24^th, from 8:30-10:15 AM in the International Center at the Washington Hilton. You can find out more information about Chris's presentation and the annual meeting by visiting the TRB Annual Meeting website.

How to Gain your Client's Trust

2011-10-17T11:27:00.000-04:00

In the present economy, clients only do business with firms they trust. And, with overhead dollars so tightly controlled, you must leverage every dollar you spend developing new business. So, here’s the challenge: what can you do to gain a client’s trust in the most cost-effective way?

Here are six of the most important qualities to demonstrate to build trust with your client:

You must prove your skill, competence, and experience in being part of a team.
You must prove you have “bench strength,” overall resources, an easily understandable organizational structure, and financial stability.
You must prove you have a solid reputation with other client partners who have collaborated with you.
You must take the time to understand your clients’ overall financial constraints on each project.
You must commit to building relationships with all client stakeholders that are integral to project success.
You must thoroughly consider all alternatives, and achieve results in a timely manner.

In contrast, here are six ways to quickly sink the relationship:

Be late on a deliverable
Give an excuse for being late on a deliverable
Be slow to return their call
Give an excuse why you were slow to return their call
Ask for an unexpected change order
Give an excuse for waiting to ask for additional money

Citation: PSMJ Newsletter

SMPS Student Scholarship Winner!

2011-09-09T08:29:00.001-04:00

A big congratulations to Foresite Group's former marketing intern, Jennifer Paucke for winning the 2011 SMPS National Ron Garikes Student Scholarship! This scholarship is awarded to a student pursuing a degree in marketing, public relations, or communications who is planning a career in professional services marketing. Read more about the history behind this scholarship at www.smps.org.

Congratulations again, Jennifer!

Featured Project: Sims Lake Park

2011-08-18T10:30:00.014-04:00

On park + greenspace projects, our staff of engineers and designers must work ever so closely with our client and the community to make their visions a reality. Our overall focus is to connect the site to the community but, oftentimes, we don't get to fully experience it.

Foresite Group recently re-visited a 2008 park project designed for the City of Suwanee. Sims Lake Park boasts a water feature leading to a seven-acre lake, walking trails, outdoor classroom area, a restroom and maintenance facility, picnic spots, and an exquisite pavilion overlooking the open play fields. The site is a magnet to residents of all ages. We observed groups of small children enjoying the playground, parents picnicking under the pavilion, families playing with ducks near the water feature, and elder couples strolling through the trails. The park is truly a successful integration of beauty, function and design.