Strategy and Tactics

One MBP tenet is that CM is a practice that requires a distinct skill set that must grow and adapt with the changing construction environment. Both principals have been active in boosting professional standards to benefit the CM sector as well as boost the firm's competitive advantage. Bolyard works through the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International, and Peck advocates CM certification through the Construction Management Association of America. “Today, we have more specialization and recognition that these jobs require distinct skills and tools,” Bolyard says. “And if you don't have them, you're lacking as a CM.”

Federal market complexities, particularly multisource budgeting, highlights this fact, says Peck. “The CM has to be sure that specific funds are being used for their specific purposes,” he says. “In large organizations where geographically dispersed offices may interpret requirements differently, the CM has to be well versed in both their intent and execution.”

Increasingly, CMs also have assumed the role of educators and communicators as owners lose in-house technical knowledge to shrinking budgets and a graying workforce, says Bolyard. “You, as the CM, may understand everything, but the owner needs to fully understand the options to make decisions in real time,” he says. “It's better to make a project good from the outset and not have to dig it out of a hole later.”

Few programs have been better suited to this focused approach than BRAC, which wraps in September after pushing billions in construction to meet military deadlines for consolidating missions and relocating uniformed and civilian staff. Experience is a much appreciated quality in military construction organizations, where the turnover of uniformed CM staff is a fact of life. “Many project managers are young and [in the military] experience their first CM management role that has oversight responsibilities,” says Brian Moore, vice president of The Louis Berger Group Inc., an MBP subcontractor on the Walter Reed project.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) campus project involved a massive high-security facility using early contractor involvement (ECI)—a novel acquisition approach for the Corps, its manager—all within four years, from site selection to completion. The facility, set to become the third-largest federal building in metro Washington, will consolidate NGA operations and an 8,500-person workforce. It also is one of the Corps' largest military construction projects.

“On a project this complex, knowledge of processes and procedures is critical, especially with a lot of stakeholders,” says Scott Lang, senior vice president of KCI Technologies, a design firm on MBP's CM team. “You have to bring in good people, set a high-quality standard and keep everyone focused.”

Michael Rogers, NGA program manager with the Corps of Engineers' Baltimore District, says the project would not have happened without a collaborative approach. “MBP in particular brought exceptional technical talent and integrated it seamlessly within the Corps team,” he says. Construction has stayed ahead of a mandated September deadline. “The Corps recognized what was at stake with the budget and schedule and that we could make a difference,” says Peck. “I've never seen a better team environment.”

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.”