City Grill

Keith Lieberman 
Senior Vice President, Regional Operations Manager
T&M Associates

Lieberman says this year will be “more about the macroeconomic factors of labor shortages, materials prices and interest rates,” which increase construction costs and lower return on investments. “Leveraging new technologies and innovative building practices such as modularization will be key.” Noting life sciences as “the hottest market” in the area, he says a recent JLL Global Research report ranked Philadelphia as the fifth-largest cluster in the country and one of the fastest growing. 

While the office sector is hurting, Lieberman says “the key to its turnaround will be integration of placemaking within the office environment” to attract employees back to the office. But while the Philadelphia area is generally “immune to booms and busts,” he notes that “the headwinds of rising interest rates and labor and materials costs will put pressure on the industry.”

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is finally here. “Now that BIM is pretty much universally embraced,” Lieberman says, “AI design software is the next trend in optimization and value engineering.”