Latest news with #SkanskaUSA
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Adopting technology is a team effort: Skanska exec
This story was originally published on Construction Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Construction Dive newsletter. Adopting new technology requires everyone to buy in, said Danielle O'Connell, senior director of emerging technology for Skanska USA, the U.S. arm of the Swedish builder. The contractor uses what O'Connell calls its Eight-Step Plan, a tech addition roadmap that lays out critical moves to help it assess and integrate products. With it, the company takes measured actions to scale new solutions, figure out use cases and keep everyone on the same page. Here, O'Connell talks with Construction Dive about its approach, how the firm smoothed out wrinkles in the process and advice for smaller builders looking to scale tech on their own. Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. DANIELLE O'CONNELL: Our Eight-Step Plan is our tech enablement process. The process begins with identifying the problem that we're trying to solve. In many forms, that comes either from a project team that says they're really struggling with this thing, or maybe they've been talking with a vendor or visiting a conference and were exposed to something that they thought could solve a problem on their project. In other cases, my team, the emerging tech team or others in our organization are seeing things they think can make an impact. The first step is identifying the problem and then figuring out what to do. From there, we go into a deep dive with each of the vendors that we're working with to understand the makeup of their company — what their solution does, what problems it solves, data protection and cybersecurity questions. Once we get through that stuff, the next step is to pilot a solution on a project. Throughout the pilot, we stay connected to it to understand how it's going. Typically, you're seeing pilots that are at least a year or the duration of the project to understand how the tools really work. We'll check in frequently with them, get feedback and then we'll make decisions and recommendations to the business around what scaling the solution looks like. So, cmBuilder, a construction logistics platform, was one of the early vendors that we assessed through this process. The team out at our LaGuardia Airport Terminal B Redevelopment project came to us and said they found this new tool for 3D logistics. We typically use Bluebeam for 2D logistics today. And if I think about how many of our superintendents, our project managers, our operations staff are able to now use Bluebeam to do those 2D logistics, cmBuilder is a web-based platform that allows them to now do 3D logistics. The team brought cmBuilder through this process. And after they went through the whole assessment and we kicked off the pilot, we looked at several different projects, got feedback from the team and decided that this would make sense to scale. We got buy-in from our COO, so that led to us rolling out an enterprise agreement with cmBuilder and getting this tool into the hands of those people that really needed it to communicate logistics and phasing, and how we would work around the jobsite throughout the project. There's always changes to the process. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we're always looking for ways to make it better. We've tweaked the system and the questionnaires over time to ensure that we're not putting too much burden on the vendors as they're going through this. It's a lengthy process, and we realize that they're filling out these questionnaires and sending them back to us, and there's a team on our end who's actually reviewing them. I would say one of the things that we've done to help improve and communicate around why this process is important is to talk about it like we talk about bringing on risky subcontractors onto our jobsites. I would tell them to go slow and work across their different departments. I think one of the things that we didn't do well in the past is this collaboration between the legal team that's reviewing contract language and what it means to be an enterprise partner, for example, with all the different aspects of the IT team, such as understanding what compliance we have to follow for General Data Protection Regulation requirements from the European Union, or the California Privacy Rights Act. I would encourage them to see how these tools fit into their overall tech stack as well. Spend the time to understand and communicate about the process. Recommended Reading Drones know the dirt: How UAVs can measure jobsite materials Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Boston Globe
12-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
School construction costs are already skyrocketing. Tariffs could drive them higher.
'It's $286 million, and there's no going back to the towns,' Mushnick said. 'You have to find space in the project.' Related : Advertisement For many other Massachusetts school buildings in the works, the tariff costs are not yet so concrete. State finance officials said they haven't seen direct price hikes, while builders who work on municipal projects around the state said there's 'a lot of noise' but not yet much tangible impact. All agree the risks are real, particularly for steel and lumber needs. Based on the experience of the pandemic, when supply chain problems drove up prices, builders don't expect prices to come back down even if tariffs are eventually lifted. Advertisement In March, Trump With materials accounting for about 40 percent of costs, builders estimated that if the tariffs on Canada persist, budgets could rise by 3 percent. That's a small fraction, but on a $400 million project it would mean more than $10 million extra levied on taxpayers. 'Construction prices are already high from the pandemic,' said Bryan Northrop, New England general manager of the construction and project management company Skanska USA. 'What history teaches us is ... even if the tariffs subside over time, we may not see the price return.' The construction site of the new Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School building. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff A Massachusetts School Building Authority spokesperson said the agency had not yet seen any direct price changes. 'It's hard right now to speculate on what it's going to mean, because we haven't seen any substantial changes yet,' Matt Donovan said. 'We don't know yet.' Donovan said once a project's budget and the agency's share are set, the state doesn't revise its contribution. If tariffs drive up costs on a project in the works, those costs will fall on the school district and their contractors. (When COVID supply chain issues resulted in higher prices for school construction, the state Legislature did provide some supplemental funding.) Some districts build buffers into their plans. Lynn Public Schools, for example, has a maximum budget in their Pickering Middle School project to account for potential escalations, Mayor Jared Nicholson said in a statement. Advertisement 'Additionally, we are encouraging subcontractors to source materials domestically wherever feasible to help mitigate these impacts,' Nicholson said. 'Based on our current scope of unprocured materials, a reasonable guess is that tariffs could increase project costs by approximately three percent.' Jonathan Winikur, an executive managing director at the engineering and design firm Colliers, said while tariffs will raise costs on the material side, it is actually a good time to be building if you can avoid them. As the commercial real estate market has collapsed post-COVID, construction labor costs have declined. 'We've got a lot of the workforce looking for work,' he said. 'It's a very good time to be a buyer, because the tariffs haven't hit yet, but the labor costs are soft.' Leaders at Tri-County Regional, which serves about 1,000 children and 400 adults from 11 towns near Rhode Island, are calling on the federal government to relieve them of the additional cost, potentially by exempting trade schools. Crews drilled 30 geothermal wells as part of the $24 million HVAC system being constructed at the Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Superintendent Karen Maguire recently went to D.C. to argue that their schools are crucial to the industrial growth President Trump says he is aiming for, noting the president recently 'That's what we're doing,' Maguire said. 'It would make sense to allow that to happen.' And the new building is badly needed, the leaders said. Their current structure, built in 1973, regularly springs leaks, has holes in the walls from plumbing repairs, and lacks sprinklers and other safety features. Once advanced technical facilities are badly out-of-date, and much cannot easily be replaced. Because of safety and accessibility issues, renovation would end up costing nearly as much as rebuilding. The new building will also be equipped with a geothermal heating system and space for a new program on renewable energy. Advertisement Unless they get relief soon, the project team will have to start cutting. And the tariff impact at trade schools like Tri-County is twofold: not only do many of the schools need major renovations or replacements — they were mostly built around the same time — but they also use tariffed steel and other expensive materials in their classrooms. A metal fabrication and welding teacher held a 1 1/4-inch 24-foot long pipe used for railings, roll cages, and bumpers, which used to cost $888. After the recent tariffs, it now costs $1,300 for Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Welding instructor Rick Tomasello described work his students are doing for a sculpture park in Franklin, including metal sheep and steel railings. The costs went up about 15 percent, he said. Many other shops are similarly in trouble, said Mushnick. 'The auto shop is going to get whacked,' he said. 'The idea of the tariffs is to get manufacturing in the U.S., but we're not there yet.' Other shops, including advanced manufacturing, engineering, and metal fabrication, are also training workers in key industries tariffs are meant to support, Maguire, the superintendent, noted. 'We're not making a political stand for or against tariffs,' she said. 'Is there no way we could find to exempt a project like this?' Christopher Huffaker can be reached at
Business Journals
25-04-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Skanska USA's Trevor Wyckoff talks Vancouver development
By submitting your information you are agreeing to our Privacy Policy and User Agreement . Skanska's GM says the Vancouver building department is the best he's ever worked with. After 25 years working for Skanska USA, Trevor Wyckoff in December took over as general manager for the firm's Oregon and Southwest Washington region. He's a 30-year Vancouver resident and said more than 50 of the firm's craft and salaried employees call SW Washington home. Wyckoff sat down with Portland Business Journal Publisher Candace Beeke on April 10 to kick off the PBJ's first ever Grow Vancouver event, held at the AC Hotel on the city's waterfront. GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events See also: The two talked about what makes Vancouver a good market for projects. Here are lightly edited takeaways from the conversation. On why Vancouver is a prime market for development The building department here is by far and away the best that I've ever had the opportunity to work with. The last two projects that we've done, the Mountain View High School and the School for the Deaf, we had expectations on our side and the client side for duration, for permitting, and they were probably tight. We met early on with the building department, went through what we were hoping to get out of permit timelines and then they set their expectations. It was extraordinarily collaborative process. (There is also) a large group of subcontractors and a large craft contingent based here in Clark County, so when we do projects in Vancouver, we know that we're going to get really good subcontractor participation. On how the Vancouver Waterfront has been a "game changer" I think this waterfront is one. I remember around 20 years ago when I first heard about this project. I'd been living in Vancouver for about 10 years, and I wasn't sure if it would actually take off. At the time, my wife and I wouldn't come downtown. Weekends and evenings, you would not see people downtown at all in Vancouver. What's happened over the last several years here has been a real game changer. As a community member, the pride that I have in what's happened here in this waterfront, and what that's done for the city of Vancouver, it's just amazing. On Skanska's work in Vancouver We're very excited about the growth that's happening here in Vancouver and the opportunities that will present for us as a company. So we're making a conscious effort to put more of a focus on Southwest Washington and Vancouver. One thing that is extremely exciting to us is that recently we were awarded the city of Vancouver's Maintenance and Operations Center. That is a project that we have been chasing, and we identified about three or four years ago as one that we really wanted to win.
