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The Que - From Martin and Steve

It has been amazing (and surprising in many ways)

to share out with many colleagues that we are now

more than half way through 2012 the year seems

to be ying by. As part of our Company Leaders

feedback process, we learned that we can always do

a bit better on our communications and following up

with everyone on how things are going at Urban. We

thought then, that now might be a good time to draft

up a Halftime Report outlining how 2012 has beenshaping up across the company.

What a difference a year makes! As we exit the

recession, we are seeing a growing buzz of economic

activity in our markets. This is resulting in the need

to continue building our teams and practices across

all of our ofces.

If we were to provide a

snapshot of the company as awhole, it would look something

like this:

Our ofces are all getting busier in providing

services to our clients. We are working well

across our long hallways to support each other

on projects and on training and development.

Despite the growing busyness, we need to

remember that it is relative to the workloads

in the recession years which were nothing to

write home about. So, we are busier than last

year but we still arent quite there yet. We seecapacity in all of our markets to help grow the

pie and to create opportunities for others. Again,

collaboration in this regard is strong.

In response to staff feedback, we have developed

our approach to project leadership and we are

providing project leadership training to improve

our skills in this area.

We are working on being local through

deepening practices in our existing home

markets and adding practitioners in Victoria

(Dan Huang and Kate Berniaz), and Whitehorse

(Ryan Hennessey). This is proving to be a good

investment distinguishing our practice from the

competition.

HalftimeReport

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Some of you have asked when we migh

expect to be out in the ofces for another

reside chat. We are in the process of

preparing some thoughts and insights

on Our Living Company. This notion is

gaining interest and was the theme of the

recent Novice Consultants Retreat.

We are learning a lot about our Living

Company and look forward to spending

time with everyone this fall to discuss the

opportunities, challenges, and potentia

within.

We are receiving more calls and emails

from staff across the company we like

this trend and your engagement a lot. We

encourage everyone to keep it up.

We welcome your engagement!

Have a great summer.

Steve and Martin

We are adding complementary services to our rm. We are

pleased to add our Urban Survey practice to bolster our team

in Calgary. We wonder how we might enhance our practices

in other ofces too. Your suggestions and ideas would be

much appreciated!

We are working on staff engagement discussions to see

how we might improve on the areas of communications,

accountability, collaboration, and community. We are making progress on creating shared value, through

the Urban Systems Foundation and better aligning our

professional activities such that we can achieve our Higher

Calling: Spirit in Service for Vibrant Communities.

When we invest thoughtfully in our four bottom lines (invest

our talents, energy, and ideas) we see great things happen on

our nancial bottom line. We are well positioned this year as

we come out of the gates, strong in the rst quarter. We look

forward to building momentum over the back half of 2012 with

the expectation of sharing out the benets of a solid year with

all. Thanks to each and every one of you for your hard work

thus far. Lets all commit to nishing strong and positioning fora great 2013 too.