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Business
& Labor
Agency CM Firms Redefine Services And Try to Change Their
Image
(enr.com
- 6/17/02 issue)
By Gary
J. Tulacz
Over the past decade, the trend has
been for owners to shift greater amounts of risk in the construction
process. This has worked to the advantage of firms providing
design-build and construction management at-risk. But this
trend has cut into the use of agency CM as a discreet project
delivery system. Still, firms providing agency CM service
have managed to use their management skills to take advantage
of new opportunities and market niches.
On project delivery, "the CM market
today is rotating markedly to CM at-risk," says Gui Ponce
de Leon, CEO of PMA Consultants. This has led agency CM firms
like PMA to move toward broader services, from financing through
occupancy. "We can provide management of financing, permitting,
easements and site selection," Ponce de Leon says. "We
can do everything a developer does without the premium developers
charge. We call it the no-load developer model."
Ponce de Leon points out that program
management has been an evolutionary step in CM services. "Program
management has been surging in the public arena," he
says. PMA has been involved in public sector PM since the
late 1980s and was brought in by the Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff
team on the Central Artery/Tunnel in 1989.
Another agency CM firm that has been
prominent in program management is Construction Dynamics Group.
"Twenty years ago, we had to work hard to convince people
of the need for program management services," says Larry
Zimmerman, CDG president. "Now, there are few major public
projects that aren't using PM to one extent or another."
Zimmerman estimates that about 75% of
CDG's work is in the water and wastewater market. This has
provided opportunities in broadly integrated program management.
"We are seeing big pipeline projects where public agencies
look not just at the pipeline, but at the whole project corridor
that needs to be managed. That way, you don't tear up a road
for a water line and then come back to tear it up again a
month or two later for something else."
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The meat and potatoes for program management
services has been schools. "The education market has
been leading the way on PM," says Charles F. Dahill Jr.,
CEO of PinnacleOne. But Dahill is beginning to see signs of
a trend from the K-12 market toward higher education. "Right
now, it is moving toward community colleges, with some university
work," he says. "It's a matter of demographics,
as students age."
Ironically, the blossoming of design-build
may actually be helping agency CM firms. "Arizona recently
adopted an alternative means of project delivery law, and
for public agencies, it's the newest thing in town,"
notes Dahill. But few public agencies have any experience
in design-build and need to hire CM firms as their agents
to help them through the process, he says.
While firms providing agency CM are
finding greater opportunities to use their expertise by providing
new and expanding services, many are facing an identity problem.
"We play games in the industry with definitions,"
says Bruce D'Agostino, executive director of the Construction
Management Association of America. D'Agostino emphasizes that
construction management is not a distinct project delivery
system, but a broader management discipline. A CM firm can
deliver a variety of different services to meet the expanding
demands of owners, he says.
But firms still are fighting the image
as providing simple project delivery. "As part of a marketing
study, we did a survey of our clients," says Dahill.
"Most did not know of all the services we can supply.
We are going to have to do a better job of communicating."
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2002 TOP 100 DESIGN-BUILD FIRMS LIST
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