When it comes to expert commentary, The CRE Project Podcast looks for successful leaders throughout the commercial real estate world. On a recent episode, host and CRE broker Clayton King interviewed Will Pender, President of Adolfson & Peterson Construction’s Gulf States Region.
Will shared with the broader commercial real estate industry the important role general contractors play, as well as provided his insights into future trends he sees coming in technology and sustainability in the world of construction.
After the podcast, we had a few follow-up questions for Will. You can read his additional commentary below.
A. The GC is the hub in a large wheel, with the spokes made up of trade partners, owners, architects, engineers, end users and so on. The GC’s primary focus is to coordinate with all stakeholders while adhering to deadlines and driving the construction process of building a high quality project.
A. Two significant things that have impacted our industry are technology and offsite modular construction.
The first is BIM, which is a collaborative process bringing in everyone concerned with construction of the project – architects, developers, manufacturers, trades and others. They join together to plan, design and build a project within a single 3D model. BIM provides components and stores data. So, if any element on that model is changed, the BIM software updates the entire model to reflect that change.
Modular construction helps us compress timelines by producing standard components off-site, trucking them to the site and assembling them there. This helps speed up the construction process. It allows us to build the project components in a managed factory environment, which promotes better quality control.
A. Robotics is evolving quality to assist our efforts. Technology will also enhance real-time analytics in getting a building out of the ground and its future performance. For example, if we remove a particular component from a building during the construction phase, how might that impact the building in a week, down the road a year or even 25 years from now?
A. I think technology proficiency will be the most significant skill set required. When I first got into the industry, I would check rebar spacing with the concrete foreman from a set of paper shop drawings. These days, every foreman in the field is running around with a tablet loaded with all project documents in order to provide real time, up to date data.
I also think machinery will be more automated. Instead of a worker grabbing a steering wheel or lever to operate a backhoe, excavator, bulldozer or crane, I can see workers programming a route or depth into a computer for the machine to follow. I also see autonomous robots and cranes reading QR codes erecting the structure which could allow for 24/7 work times.
A. Transparency and trust between a GC and developer/architect are critical. Most general contractors use the same qualified trade partners. You need to ask yourself if you can trust them to manage your $100 million project. Can you get along and work with these individuals for 15 to 24 months or longer? That GC needs to be 100% transparent about everything from budget to paperwork. At AP, we pride ourselves on being 100% transparent, 100% of the time. We will always “do the right thing.”
