Ledcor San Diego Construction Group

Joining up┬áPeriods of financial difficulty are often good times for military recruitment, but Ledcor San Diego Construction Group is finding the military helpful in overcoming its own difficulties, as Alan T Swaby learns. Despite being 80 percent complete, when Lehman Brothers went under on September 15 last year, work on a new Ritz-Carlton hotel near Palm Springs, California, stopped overnight. No doubt similar scenarios took place all around North America, if not globally, but for newly appointed regional manager Russell Hamilton, it was the biggest challenge he had yet had to face.Hamilton had barely been in charge of Ledcor ConstructionÔÇÖs San Diego office for two minutes when the financial world went into meltdown. ÔÇ£There was no rulebook to work to,ÔÇØ he says. ÔÇ£We all had to learn on the spot. For Ledcor it was deeply disappointing having to lay off good workers, especially when an $80 million project was so close to completion.ÔÇØBut, as they say, what doesnÔÇÖt kill you makes you stronger. As well as the minutiae of securing the site, preparing inventories and generally putting the house in order until such time as the financial mess was sorted out, Ledcor needed to plug the gap in its order book and keep an otherwise profitable and productive regional office occupied.With its headquarters in Canada and numerous offices throughout North AmericaÔÇöand more recently, internationallyÔÇöthe Ledcor Group has revenues bordering on $3 billion a year. It has countless skills in the heavy end of the spectrum, ranging from major building projects to highly technical industrial plants. Before the September catastrophe, the San Diego office had generated a third of contributions coming from the United States. With revenues of $50 million, the San Diego office is still a reasonable-sized player in the region, though half the size it was before the setback.Ledcor moved into this part of the US only ten years ago through the acquisition of Bearing Construction and then later RG Petty. This gave it an immediate foothold into commercial and mixed-use projects and a loyal customer base. ÔÇ£Most of the work weÔÇÖve been getting,ÔÇØ says Hamilton, ÔÇ£has been repeat business or referrals. But until such time as these guys can once again get lines of credit, weÔÇÖre casting our net a bit wider than we have in the past.ÔÇØIn fact, the design and estimating departments at Ledcor are as busy as ever. As inflation rates decrease and costs actually come down, so too does the possibility of once-marginal projects taking place. ÔÇ£We try to be proactive,ÔÇØ says Hamilton, ÔÇ£adopting new ideas to projects on the back burnerÔÇöanything that will get business moving once more.ÔÇØAs luck would have it, a few staff members in the San Diego office are Army veterans, well versed in the specialized purchasing procedures used by the military and keen to get Ledcor on the militaryÔÇÖs approved list. Hamilton has given their enthusiasm full rein and is making good use of their inside knowledge, starting to win business from both military and public sources. ÔÇ£The construction work is just the same,ÔÇØ he says. ÔÇ£Residential accommodation is residential accommodation. But the military works in its own particular way, which, weÔÇÖve been pleased to discover, is not that dissimilar to the message we push.ÔÇØRather than the traditional design-bid-build model, Ledcor likes to get involved in a project as early as possible so that it can provide prospective owners with real-time information on the likely cost of a project while there is still time to influence it without too much drama. ÔÇ£Architects try to give the value of a building but are often off the mark,ÔÇØ says Hamilton. ÔÇ£If this is discovered only after the design has been signed off, it can lead to disastrous cost overruns. If we have the opportunity to join the process early enough, we can be costing concepts and providing feedback on virtually a daily basis.ÔÇØThe importance of getting involved in this way at an early stage is in direct proportion to the technical complexity of a project. Areas such as health facilities or research laboratoriesÔÇöboth sectors where Ledcor is activeÔÇöare prime examples of where regular updating of budget costs as linked to the design are essential. So too are buildings with special aesthetic slants.Military procurement has changed in recent years, and it is now adopting wholeheartedly different ways of managing projects. Alongside the well-established design-build model there are other concepts such as construction management (at risk or otherwise) and the most recent concept of CM-multiprime, by which a construction manager is appointed to oversee multiple smaller contracts rather than handing over the entire project to a single principal contractor.┬á The military uses different assessment processes but is essentially looking for suitable partners with the right kind of expertise and skills. As such, there are considerable pre-qualification stages to go through that have enabled the many strings in LedcorÔÇÖs bow to stand out.One advantage of being part of a major group is the ability to pull in resources from other branches. Ledcor keeps a database of all employees, their skills and interests, and marries them where appropriate to different projects, ensuring the highest level of collaboration between offices. ÔÇô Editorial research by Jason Moore┬á