Before a credit deal is signed
The city is in the midst of a building boom.All over downtown, the landscape is changing as office space gets tighter and towers sprout up on once-empty street-level parking lots. One of the city’s largest,most prestigious contractors has just completed negotiations with a legal firm to build a new office tower. The location was selected, and preliminary architectural design work was completed.With the tight budget and time constraints, how could Robert, the contractor, get the job completed on time and on budget? The legal firm was currently leasing fifteen stories, and their lease was up at the end of the following year. They needed to have their new building finished by then.
Once the deal was signed, Robert went to work scoping out the project plan and timeline.Although he had completed many projects in the past, this one was special. The magnitude of the project, the prestigious location, and the scale of the building put additional pressure on him to make sure the project went off without a hitch. Constructing a thirtyseven- story building is a complex task. Coordinating the numerous variables can strain the best project manager’s Partnering Intelligence. But nothing is quite so critical, or as potentially stressful, as the labor issue. Not only is labor one of the biggest expenses, it could be the component most easily mismanaged. Robert remembered one project when an electrical union had walked off the job.Not only did the strike shut down the entire project for over a month, but once it was settled, it took three weeks just to reorganize the project timeline—think of the headache caused by all the building materials arriving with no place to store them. It cost everyone a bundle in lost time, money, and goodwill.
