Bryce Unger has degrees in both Civil Engineering and Business, receiving a B.S. and a M.S. from UW-Madison and an M.B.A. from UW-Milwaukee. He has continued on as an adjunct professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering on the topics of contracts and specifications, construction project management and cost engineering.
In the last 25 years, Bryce has built over one billion dollars in construction representing both large-scale, complex construction projects and small-scale, high-end tenant buildouts. The vision of how an owner defines success on a project is Bryce’s hallmark. This allows Bryce to orient his project teams and the project controls in a direction that always remains focused on the owner’s expectations.
CG Schmidt, a family-owned company since 1920, provides clients with professional construction management services. The company specializes in corporate, industrial, healthcare, educational, senior living and cultural markets.
How did you become involved in the construction and design industry?
I entered the industry in 1995 after studying Construction Engineering and Management at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Combining engineering and business in construction was a way to combine both problem solving skills as well as communication skills. Both of these skill sets are required to create amazing buildings from seemingly nothing.
What is something that your company is doing that you consider innovative?
We started with a simple question: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had constant access to current information that was intuitively organized so that we could focus on building awesome buildings?”
Yes, it is important and CG Schmidt does utilize sophisticated management systems and best-in-class construction technology to develop estimates and manage costs; streamline and track critical project information; improve collaboration; monitor safety and quality; and maintain project schedules. These systems represent innovation within our marketplace, but it doesn’t capture how CG Schmidt looks at innovation. CG Schmidt went a step further and organized the way these different systems, programs, apps, videos, templates and websites were used and related to each other as well as the construction process. In order to keep these complicated processes simple, practical and effective, we developed a project map that we call our “Timeline”. It is a PDF organized by project phase (preconstruction, construction and closeout) and into “swim lanes” (budget, schedule, quality, safety, etc). Each activity includes a link to systems, templates and instructional videos. This focuses our project teams to engage management systems to achieve outcomes necessary to build awesome buildings.
What poses a challenge, risk or opportunity for your clients and what is your company doing to address it?
Information overload across the entire construction supply chain leads to frustration, errors, omissions and owner dissatisfaction.
While technology claims to be the solution to information overload, it also is the very source of the problem. Systems bells, whistles and unending alerts many times distract rather than increase focus.
Like any tool, once you align the use with the purpose, you’re able to get real work done. At CG Schmidt, we first look to the end product to guide how we organize the data using nomenclature, categorizing and filtering. This allows us to stack data and extract items with action, priority and impact. We then summarize this information for our clients so they are always aware of their project’s latest schedule and budget progress, along with any current key decisions that need to be made. This helps us focus both ourselves and our clients on the items that matter the most.
The end result is increased confidence in scheduling, with decreased cost by avoiding rework and confusion.
What is something you view as an emerging trend in the industry and what are your perspectives on it?
Cybersecurity is rapidly becoming a critical issue for project partners to share information safely without decreasing accessibility. Pfishing emails and websites are reducing the freedom of email and the internet. We see the need to drive further towards cloud-based solutions that provide safe places for our customers, partners and suppliers to communicate and securely access information.
Any final thoughts on what to keep an eye on in the near future in the construction and design industry?
Workforce availability will continue to decrease creating scarcity of labor. Prefabrication is a solution that moves labor off the site and places it in a controlled environment. Prefabrication also becomes an access point for unskilled individuals to obtain critical experience in a controlled location. This experience becomes a springboard to access skilled trade labor on construction sites. Expect prefabrication to increase in its complexity and to become more integrated with work that occurs on site. This will increase the need for pre-planning and coordination to ensure the end product is delivered as expected.
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