Keeping a program on track is equally important in creating the new Walter Reed medical center that integrates once separate Army and Navy medical programs in the Washington, D.C., area. The project includes 667,000 sq ft of new medical space and 400,000 sq ft of renovations to existing facilities. Maintaining communications across the project team is one of MBP’s strengths, Moore says.
Bolyard insists that when MBP is awarded a new project, “the owner is hiring us for our expertise, our ability to do the right things the right way, and to create and maintain harmony and collaboration.” Peck says that may mean putting the project’s best interests ahead of the owner’s. “We represent the owner, but it’s also our responsibility to bring them face-to-face with reality,” he explains. “That means delivering bad messages as well as good ones so that the owner can understand the true areas of concern and how to address them to keep things moving in the right direction.”
But MBP’s role is not always appreciated by project team members. MBP dropped one difficult client, a golf-course owner, when it became apparent he wasn’t listening, says CMAA’s D’Agostino. Contractors also may chafe. MBP was hired several years ago to manage late-stage schedule and cost issues on the $621-million U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The project needed to stay on schedule and was under new pressure from congressional overseers. Site contractors say they found that hire awkward. “But at the end of the day, our numbers were validated,” says Alfred Potter, senior vice president of Gilbane Building Co., a key contractor on the visitor center. He says, “[MBP] is well respected, but sometimes their positions fly in the face of firms like ours.”
Robert Hixon, the former visitor-center project manager for its owner, the Architect of the Capitol, says, “[MBP] had a very positive impact, focusing on things that would have jeopardized our success. They don’t take anything for granted. If there’s an issue, Blake shows up.” Employees echo the executives’ personal touch. “Charlie and Blake are both focused like laser beams on improving the quality of our services and the work life of our employees, ” says Robert Fraga, a former federal procurement manager and now an MBP regional operations manager in Columbia, Md.
Although the federal market has helped insulate CMs somewhat from the recession and the sluggish recovery, MBP executives know they can’t afford to be complacent. “Clients still have needs, but now they need help in determining how to meet them with even fewer resources than before,” says Bolyard. “Instead of tearing down a building after 25 years, they want to know if perhaps they can get another 20 years out of it. These are all questions that a CM is best suited to help answer.” This is one reason the firm aims to expand its building commissioning practice.
But growing pressures in federal military spending and sector competition could delay MBP’s future growth plans to become a national player. “Downsizing in the DOD budget will cut back on contract hires,” says one former executive. Last month, NAVFAC cancelled an estimated $100-million contract to a team of MBP, Jacobs Engineering and Louis Berger for work in Guam in advance of the planned move of Japan-based troops there. D’Agostino says Peck and his two brothers used to live on the island while their father did missionary work there. But with a slower pace of work now envisioned and two contract protests in play from losing bidders, NAVFAC has opted to act as its own CM on the work, according to MBP. “They had targeted to put a lot of people there,” says one industry observer.
Another major hurdle is the increasing perception of CM—like many other elements of construction—as a commodity. Representing a small percent of the budget that is easy to control “puts a lot of downward cost pressure on us, making it more difficult to provide a level of service the project will require,” Peck says. Adds Bolyard, “The CM and PM firms that aren’t able to do it are in danger of being left behind.”
