The Bricker & Eckler LLP Construction Group has a Team of 16 professionals who devote substantially all of their time to construction law. The Team includes eight engineering school graduates, including three registered Professional Engineers, two of whom are attorneys and one who is a Construction Fellow attending night law school and working full-time for the firm.

The Construction Group’s attorneys and staff possess a combination of both legal and construction experience, with 145 total years of legal experience and 105 total years of construction experience. This construction experience includes a very wide range of positions and projects, including these examples:

• Serving as a project engineer of a $2.2 billion-dollar theme park expansion;

• Designing a 195-foot tall transfer tower and foundations for a grain terminal;

• Serving as the project engineer for a $25 million-dollar school district renovation project;

• Serving as the project manager for a mechanical system installation for the renovation of two floors of a major hospital; and

• Being the principal designer and project manager for the construction and operation of water and wastewater treatment plants.

Building a Team dedicated to continuous improvement. Part of The Bricker Advantage is our emphasis on a strong team orientation. This emphasis involves a continuing investment in infrastructure, including formal and informal training. This investment is directed at selecting and nurturing people and embraces the concept of continuous improvement.

Distinguishing features of The Bricker Advantage. What does continuous improvement mean? It means that our professional development program includes the following elements:

• We have a Core Ideology - Exceptional People Delivering Superior Value with Integrity and Professionalism. We developed our Core Ideology after several meetings and an off-site, facilitated meeting. Our Core Ideology is our guiding set of values. See the discussion at pages 46-79 in J. Collins, Built To Last (2002).

• We have a strategic plan, based on the concepts in R. Bradford, Simplified Strategic Planning (2000). As a Team, we have participated in two strategic planning efforts, involving multiple meetings and each culminating off-site.

• We hire law students and professionals with construction backgrounds and have done so since 2000. Since that time, we have hired seven individuals with engineering degrees.

• Our interview and selection process focuses on hiring people with our values, as stated in our Core Ideology.

• We offer a Construction Fellowship program. This is a program the Department developed to encourage persons with construction backgrounds to attend law school and to work as a part of our team while attending law school. David Riddle, P.E., is our current Construction Fellow, attending night law school at Capital University and working full-time for us during the day. We are currently looking to hire two additional Construction Fellows during 2006.

• Our monthly electronic construction law newsletter, Brickerconstructionlaw.com (formerly ohioconstructionlaw.com), is beginning its eighth year of publication. In addition to updating the industry on legal developments, the discipline of writing and publishing the newsletter helps keep us current.

• We hold regularly scheduled Department meetings every Monday and Wednesday, except holidays. The Wednesday luncheon meetings provide a venue for an informal exchange of information and training.

• We have developed, and continue to improve, our proprietary Bricker & Eckler LLP Construction Department Tactical Manual with standardized best practices for handling construction claims.

• Every year we sponsor and participate in the Top Gun Construction Claims program which teaches the fundamentals of construction law. Each year our Team of professionals updates our Top Gun Construction Claims Manual and presents the program along with members of the construction industry.

• We have in-house litigation training for all attorneys on our Team. Judge Ralph Adam Fine, author of The How-To-Win Trial Manual, 3rd Edition (2005), conducts the 2-day program.