< PreviousFor Clark/Sullivan Construction, it’s not about getting bigger, it’s about getting better. The company’s aim is to improve customer experience by working smarter, being open and transparent and involving the client every step of the way, all through state-of-the art technology. It’s no wonder Clark/Sullivan is known as ‘The Partner to Build With.’Technology Collaboration at Dolan Lexus Job SiteJUNE 201830Written by Margaret Patricia EatonIt’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when The Age of Information began, but certainly by the late 1980s the digital revolu-tion was underway, and over the next 30 years impacted all aspects of how we live, communicate and work. While its impact is immediately obvious in business and manufacturing, not everyone recognizes the critical role digital technology can play in the construction industry. “Oftentimes I would talk to people in the IT industry who would ask, ‘Why does a construction company need an IT guy?’ shares Todd Miknus, Clark/Sullivan’s IT Manager, who began his career there in 2006 as a technology consultant, before coming on board in his present full-time position in 2007. “But in my mind, it makes perfect sense because of all the systems I manage,” he explains. “The people who work with me understand it, but I think there are people on the outside who think construction is all about labor and sweat in the field. That’s certainly true; there is labor and sweat, but you also have the office aspect and that is a part of construction too — putting together schedules, dealing with emails. All of that helps improve efficiency in the office, because you want a good marriage and good communication between office operations and field operations.”For example, the company has standardized its use of the MS Surface Pro Tablet, a hybrid laptop/tablet computer with a touch screen and a stylus pen. To be sure, Miknus admits, “the Superintendents who’ve been working in the field for 20 or 30 years, long before tablets were available, know how to do the job with pencil and paper, but one of our goals is to show them how these new tools can help. Of course, they know how to do construction really well and they can teach someone like me a lot about construction, but on the flip side I can teach them just as much about technology. It takes time for both sides to learn, but then we have the best of both worlds,” he says.“You want a good marriage and good communication between office operations and field operations.”“Much of the software we use is based out of San Francisco simply because of proximity and an example of some Bay Area technology that C/S standardized on is www.box.com, an online file storage container. We began cloudifying our project documentation in BOX and that speeds up access to informa-tion and there is a ton of it in there – over four terabytes of good construction information. Digitizing it and standardizing it in one place helps us stay organized in our main offices in Nevada and California, but when we have a trailer on a job site, which becomes a satellite office, everyone has immediate access to the same information. Saving this amount of informa-tion in the past would have been expensive and slow to access but using box.com has really been great.” Miknus goes on to say, however, that before a new technol-ogy is adopted, it is vetted by putting it in the “hands of con-struction workers in the field. They will test it and if it doesn’t work for them, they will let us know with a comment similar to ‘This thing is going out the window or under a forklift if it doesn’t start to work!’ If the tech is not saving them time and it’s not working for them, we will abandon it. We believe in col-laborating both externally (with our clients) and internally (with employees) and we don’t have top-down decisions. It’s more about, ‘this looks like a good idea, let’s test it and see if it works for everyone and then run with it.’” 31CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS HistoryJust over 35 years ago when the Internet was still in its infancy and smart phones, tablets, webcams and wireless connec-tions still the stuff of science fiction, Dave Clark and B.J. Sullivan founded what Clare Christensen, Director of Marketing & Management calls, “a scrappy little contracting company, trying to break out on their own.” At that time their signature “rasp-berry” logo and branding was seen throughout town. Although many may have found the color choice to be odd, she says the founders didn’t mind, as people kept saying, ‘You guys must be really busy, because I see your pink trucks everywhere.’ Today those pink trucks have been replaced by a fleet of white and green ones while 110 Clark/Sullivan employees work from offices in Sparks, NV and Roseville, CA and from remote satellite offices on job sites throughout Nevada and California. The company’s portfolio includes public facili-ties, education, hospitality, medical, industrial and commercial buildings. “We enjoy projects that build better communities,” says Christensen. “Always an innovator, Dave led the company into new markets and lots of new trucks,” she adds. Clark is now retired, but co-founder and company Chairman B.J. Sullivan who continues working in day-to-day operations while mentoring the next generation of leader/owners, is and always was “a go-getter, who pushes us to refine our technology and approaches.”“We’re not afraid to try new things when it comes to technology.”She explains that, “We like to push the envelope; we like to try new things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but we’re not afraid to try new things when it comes to technology. It’s paid off because after our projects are done, one of the things owners and stakeholders tell us is that they are so impressed with how we embrace technology and how we can make someone feel like part of the team, even though they are not on the job site.”IT Manager at Field Portal JUNE 201832 TechnologyWith that kind of progressive thinking, Miknus is a natural fit as his skills lead the company forward in ways the founders couldn’t have dreamed of in the early 80s, given the technol-ogy that was available then. Long before the ground on a new project is broken more and more collaboration is happening between the general con-tractor, the architects, various subcontractors, and the project owners, which often times leverages technology. “The more collaborative you want to be, the more accessible you have to be,” he says, “and you need to be able to have remote meetings and you can’t stick to the old ways just because ‘this is the way we’ve always done it.’ There’s a shift away from the hard-bid project delivery method, where the lowest dollar amount always wins, because now it’s about more than the overall dollar amount; it’s about service, trust, listening to the client and working with them to be flexible. We can use the tech-nology to be more collaborative and we can get creative with our time because of technology which helps to save time and make things more efficient.” The company also partners with architects who use programs such as AUTOCAD and REVIT to create systems and buildings virtually before they are constructed in reality. “Most of these BIM programs are under the umbrella of AUTODESK and we collaborate hand-in-hand with the architect before construc-tion with tools that capture each comment and notify each person in real time on one platform,” he says.And, Miknus adds, it’s not only clients and staff the company needs to communicate with. “People may think the construc-tion industry doesn’t interface with a lot of different agencies, when the reality is that not only are we in communication with the project owner and various subcontractors, we have to know all the local environmental laws and we have to take into account many different municipalities, state or federal govern-ing agencies.”Technology also lets Clark/Sullivan pool its resources, even when working in two different states or through a joint venture (JV) with another company. “Because of the technology we’ve adopted, we were able to pull a Project Engineer from our California office to help work on a project we’re doing right now near Lake Tahoe (Nevada), which is a joint venture with another General Contractor, so that means we’re working with a second company which requires more collaboration. So just on that one project alone, we have one project manager from our Nevada office, a project engineer from California office along with an entire separate team of people who are part of a JV company which uses their own technologies, and we are all collaborating together on one project to get it done.” The newest technology Clark/Sullivan has introduced includes live cameras, giving a real-time portal into the progress of the project with a picture taken every five minutes, every day, rain or shine. “We want to give our stakeholders as much visibil-ity and transparency as we can, and the live cameras are a solution we have found success in,” Miknus says. And because the photos are posted publicly on the com-pany’s website, cams.clarksullivan.com. The cameras are also available for schools and colleges to use as a visual tool to get Technology Collaboration at McClatchy High School Performing Arts Job SiteJUNE 201834students exciting and asking questions about construction. “We stitch all the pictures together to create a time-lapse video, showing months and months of work distilled into a two or three-minute video. When you can condense two years’ worth of construction into a short video there are a lot of things hap-pening and just pressing the pause button once will open up a ton of opportunities for question and answers.”“We want to give our stakeholders as much visibility and transparency as we can.” At first, the company used a commercially available time lapse photography software product, but then decided to take advantage of the flexibility and savings that could result if it had its own software which Clark/Sullivan developed in-house. “So, we figured out all the problems and solved them and added new features and became somewhat of an in-house software developing company on a very small scale. We also crunched the numbers and there was a large potential savings to be had,” says Miknus. Creating a custom time-lapse camera solution in-house helped saved money against the bottom line because it reduced “hosting costs” of putting time-lapse camera pictures into the cloud. This decision to create a custom solution was completely opposite from organizing project files in box.com as mentioned earlier. While Clark/Sullivan leverages a number of platforms, including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, Miknus chose Vimeo as a platform to host the videos resulting from the hundreds of thousands of 18-megapixel photographs taken over the life of a project. “Right now, it’s a visibility tool, but we’re tying it to our schedule, so if a subcontractor were to say, ‘on this date I installed these power poles’ we could go back and look and say, ‘we don’t see you on that date, but we see you a week later.’ A new goal is to develop shorter videos that are slowed down to show specific phases of construction such as structural steel or foundation work.” In addition, the company uses 360° cameras, which are different from the time lapse cameras and which document the interior. Miknus adds: “These 360° cameras give a completely different feel compared to a 2D photograph and the newer technologies really can immerse the viewer in a room or a building without having to step foot on site.”In the end, of course, it is customer satisfaction and repeat business that measure success, and Clark/Sullivan is way ahead with 80 percent of its business being from repeat clients. While there are undoubtedly many contributing factors, not the least of which is a company philosophy that believes “great indi-viduals make great teams,” it’s technology which makes Clark/Sullivan’s ideals of collaboration, communication and innova-tive solutions a reality.BIM Coordination at UNR Palmer Engineering Renovation Job SiteDering Pierson Group is a general contractor providing a host of services. It began with people of like mind and similar values but varied experiences who decided to form a company. What followed is a successful venture that includes general contracting services for the hospitality and commercial markets.JUNE 201836We spoke with principals Joyce Dering, Adam Dering and Michael Pierson about plans to expand into the government sector, issues with the labor pool and about how the personal touch can keep clients and gain new ones.Dering Pierson Group began in 2011 in a one-room office in Rogers, Minnesota. It quickly expanded, doubling its revenue over the first three years. A new office in Rogers was purchased and renovated in 2015.Joyce began in 1993 in Arizona with a large Steelcase commercial furni-ture dealership. After a couple of years there, she moved to New York when offered a position with one of the largest Steelcase dealerships in the country. There she worked in project manage-ment and logistics across North America and Canada for seven years.“My primary role was Project Management; in that function I had a lot of interface with construction. I learned a lot. Adam and I met on a mutual client’s jobsite in the Trade Center,” says Joyce.Michael Pierson has a degree in construc-tion engineering from North Dakota State University and a master’s degree Written by Mark GolombekAdam DeringPrincipal of Dering Pierson GroupJoyce DeringPrincipal of Dering Pierson GroupMichael PiersonPrincipal of Dering Pierson Groupin business administration. Straight from school, he worked for Mortenson Construction of Minneapolis and stayed there for six years.“While at Mortenson I worked on various projects, including the Central Library in downtown Minneapolis. I gained a lot of experience there before coming to Lifetime Fitness. I was recruited to run their pre-construction group, and that is where Adam and I met,” says Michael.Adam had come to America from Poland in 1983 and spent almost twenty years working on commercial renovations projects throughout New York City. He started as a union carpenter but quickly moved into various management roles for LEHR Construction, at that time one of NYC leading General Contractors. The last ten years of Adam’s NYC expe-rience were spent on a number of TI projects at the World Trade Center complex. At one point, one of his clients brought him in to become the vice president of corporate services for Guy Carpenter, which is a part of the Marsh & McLennan Companies.“I was put in charge of construction and real estate, tied into office locations and “The Dering Pierson Group became a full general contractor with an emphasis on the hospitality market, restaurants and hotels.”37CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS new leasing in North America. We moved to Minneapolis in 2002, and I continued working with Guy Carpenter for another year before being recruited to be the Director of Construction for Lifetime Fitness,” says Adam.Lifetime Fitness constructed and renovated all of its own facili-ties in-house. When Adam and Michael were there, Lifetime was doing over $400 million in work annually. However, with the recession of 2008-2009, Lifetime significantly reduced its construction activities.Given the uncertainty of Lifetime’s construction future, and the outside opportunities being presented, both Mike and Adam, along with Joyce, started their separate construction companies.“Mike and I had kept in touch after we left Lifetime. We talked often about the projects we had going, and how strapped we were for resources. And how we had more projects coming up, and not enough resources to complete them,” says Adam.The three decided to combine resources in 2011 to start their own company. They realized that they had the clientele and the experience and so started the Dering Pierson Group.The Dering Pierson Group became a full service general contrac-tor with an emphasis on the hospitality market, restaurants and hotels. These industries are interconnected, and once it had done well on one project, word of mouth spread. After having done a couple of restaurants and a few hotel remodeling projects, the company became very busy with these types of projects.“We also do tenant improvements, retail, and municipal work. We stick primarily to commercial work and try to stay away from residential. Our clients range from a small coffee shop to hotel renovations and office remodels in downtown Minneapolis,” says Joyce.Dering Pierson Group can tackle anything from a $5,000 office remodel to a $10 million hotel renovation. Currently, it has a $20 “Marketing efforts have not been necessary as work has been driven by word of mouth, references and personal connections.”Redstone National Harbor, MDRedstone Minnetonka, MNRedstone Burlington, MAJUNE 201838 million bonding capacity for projects. Many of these jobs do not require bonding, but it helps clients to understand what its capabilities are.In the first three years of business, Dering Pierson Group grew rapidly. At the end of the third year, there was a concern that with too much volume, personal interaction might be lost. “We didn’t like that very much, so we slowed our growth to emphasize the fact that we are personally involved in every one of our projects. We do frequent visits; we drive the quality, performance and customer service on each one of our projects. We make sure to have plenty of face-time with our customers,” says Michael.This approach allows Dering Pierson Group to have a high level of accountability in everything it does. It does not cut corners or make decisions based on the bottom line. It is more concerned about doing the right thing and making sure that clients are satisfied with the job. Dering Pierson Group is careful in selecting employees who share and represent the company’s values. “We have a basketball court in the middle of our office as well as a ping-pong table and a mezzanine with a full bar, pool table and leather seating with an 80” TV. We are constantly thinking about the work-life balance, which is why we don’t have an office with cubicle farms,” says Adam.The environment is designed to relieve stress. Staff stick around not just for the pay but for how it feels like to come and work here. Currently, there are fourteen employees.Marketing efforts have not been necessary as work has been driven by word of mouth, references and personal connections. Redstone Minnetonka, MNRedstone National Harbor, MDRedstone Burlington, MA39CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >