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Daily Business Report- 6/12/09

June 12, 2009

Daily Business Report

June 12, 2009

EDUCATION’S CONSTRUCTION BOOM

Public agencies are proving to be a good source of work for properly-prepared real estate and construction firms. “In the last 10 years, UCSD has had at least $350 million in projects under construction or in the design process,” Marci Holcomb Kissock, senior director of campus project management, told those attending a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Urban Land Institute. “Right now we have 29 projects in construction and 30 projects in the planning phase.”

Other panelists at the June 9 event were Robert Schultz, SDSU’s associate v.p. of operations of facilities planning, design and construction and Chris Day, v.p. at Swinerton Builders. The discussion was moderated by Jim Waring, chair of CleanTECH San Diego.

With numerous projects under construction or design each year the competition to obtain a bid can be challenging, Waring says.

Kissock notes that all projects at UCSD with projected costs of $100,000 or more are put out for a competitive bid.

Schultz says that SDSU has a very public bidding process, with all projects publicly noticed in various publications and journals. He also notes the university uses a “purely experiential based selection process,” when selecting firms for various projects.

Day, whose company has worked on projects for both UCSD and SDSU, says that a trusted relationship and performance are great factors in obtaining projects from universities.  “There is a misnomer out there that public entities don’t value relationships and I would say that’s not true.”

Another factor in obtaining public projects, Day says, is to work with companies that are qualified and efficient.  “We pre-qualify all of our subcontractors,” he says. “There is nothing that can sink a project faster than someone who bites off more than they can chew. We always try to get the right people for the right job.”