What is the most challenging aspect of
construction management?
Every project is different, and each has unique
challenges that the project team has to address.
On a hypothetical perfect project, you would have
the following:
No unknowns because you would have had the
time and budget to uncover all the potential issues
and address them in the design. You would have a
perfect design that addressed all potential issues,
accomplished all the owner’s needs, where all the
requirements were crystal clear and there was no
language subject to differing interpretations. You
would also have an adequate schedule, a quality
contractor that understood the designer’s intent
and had bid on the project with adequate funds to
execute that vision. You would have an experienced
owner who is responsive, even keeled and had the
ability to address changes in a timely fashion.
The surrounding neighborhood would be in favor
of the project and the nature of the work would
allow you to execute the work without impacting
the neighborhood. Your contractor’s project team
would have relevant experience, training, equipment
and resources to execute the work. The owner
and designer would be able to respond to RFI’s,
submittals, correspondence and pay applications in
a timely fashion.
As hard as we work towards the perfect project, I
haven’t come across one yet. You need a CM team
who are knowledgeable and experienced with the
types of issues likely to come up and who can work
with the project team to devise solutions. As the
issues you run into may be something you haven’t
personally dealt with, it is also helpful to have
access to resources knowledgeable in a wide range
of subjects. Every good CM accumulates contacts
with expertise on a wide variety of subjects.
would only be obligated to pay for costs incurred
before the sunset date. Because of permitting
delays, we were up against the clock when we
finally got the project started. Then we ran into
more delays right at the start when confirmation
sampling for disposal found contaminates not found
in any previous sampling. The CM team had to work
with the contractor and the entire project team to
come up with a plan to safely complete this work in
the time remaining. The approach we came up with
involved excavating this hazardous soil from 3 sumps
at a time, manifesting and shipping that waste to
the appropriate landfills while at the same time, we
were bringing in hundreds of truckloads of clean
soil daily to fill these excavations. All this outgoing
hazardous waste traffic and incoming clean fill
traffic had to be kept on separate site haul roads.
And all these haul routes needed to keep changing,
as we completed sumps and moved to other sumps.
This project required a huge number of stakeholders
to work as a team to resolve issues. By working
together, we were able to recover the lost time
and complete the project just ahead of the sunset
date. This allowed the port to earn the maximum
reimbursement. In doing that we worked almost
300,000 manhours without a recordable injury.
Everglades Restoration Project
I am also proud of working on an everglades
restoration project that is helping to minimize the
impact of fertilizer runoff from sugar cane fields on
the water quality in the everglades.
Middle Harbor
I am also proud of the work we did constructing the
first phase of the Port of Long Beach Middle Harbor
program. All of the projects I worked on faced
one issue after another and each of these project
teams (owner, the contractors, the designer and the
CM team) worked collectively to overcome every
challenge and successfully complete every project.
Can you give us some career highlights you are
especially proud of?
I have been fortunate to work on a lot of really cool
projects. Pier A West is probably the project I am
most proud of. Pier A West was an environmental
remediation project for the Port of Long Beach. They
started drilling for oil on Pier A West in the early
1900’s. In those days, they just dumped oil waste
right at the site in pits, or what later became known
as sumps. When the port purchased this property,
part of the deal was an agreement for the seller
to pay for the remediation costs. However, this
agreement had a sunset clause, meaning the seller
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