Case Studies April 2018

It might have taken some doing back in 2010 for the McKee brothers, Patrick and Michael, to start the home building company that bears their surname in Fayetteville, North Carolina. But as CEO Patrick explains, if it was a gamble, it was one well insulated from undue risk. For Michael had brought capital down from […]

The steel is all but covered up now, except for a few stairway rails and partially exposed beams. But it’s there, sturdy as your body’s bones, buttressing the brick and wood that give San Antonio’s Cornerstone Christian School its distinctly neoclassical form. Opened this past fall, the grades 2-12 school looks both lost in time […]

Named after one of New Jersey’s foremost engineers, Rowan University in the southwest community of Glassboro might have felt it was under extra pressure a few years ago when paperwork issues threatened to delay construction of its new department of engineering. Seems another builder was challenging the winning bid from JHDS Structural Steel Fabricators, a […]

Walk the floors of the Riverwood 100 building in Atlanta, and you’ll find a fitness center and full-service cafes, a dry cleaner and hair salon, even a car-detailing service. Outside, electric vehicle charging stations pepper the parking lots, while dozens of restaurants and shops lie just beyond the grounds. These are only some of the […]

Though last season was a disappointment, the Toronto Blue Jays still packed fans into the Rogers Centre, their average crowd of 39,554 just a few hundred behind the New York Yankees for the American League lead in attendance. Could be that some credit was due Dean-Chandler Roofing Ltd, the venerable company in Scarborough, Ontario, that’s […]

It’s March 29, Opening Day at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark (GABP), and the world feels right again. The weather, though chilly for shorts and shades, is mercifully spring-like. Players glide across the field like pent-up collies loosed to pasture, while throughout the stands fans of every age relish the sounds and smells swirling in the […]

It takes a team to perform even the most minor operation, and a major one was about to get underway a couple of years ago at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The patient being the flagship Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion of the huge hospital. The locale being urban Los Angeles, the stakes couldn’t have been much higher […]

He’s manned the night shift at some of New Jersey’s biggest casinos, saving patrons from the occasional jammed elevator. He once oversaw operations for an iconic theme park, where he maintained roller coasters and made sure the lions and rhinos had a warm place to sleep. In a behind-the-scenes kind of way, Mike Zebrowski was […]

Ever detail- and outcome-oriented, Paul Donhauser considers himself the Bill Belichick of corporate real estate management, although he may be more charismatic than the New England Patriots’ famously taciturn coach. He’s also much less secretive about his game plan. Donhauser might even like to see other companies, including competitors, borrowing from the winning strategy he […]

It’s a fact of construction life that the bosses have been bemoaning for years. Though the trades are teeming with opportunities, there’s not a rush of young men and women to be electricians, mechanics, pipefitters, masons, painters, plumbers, carpenters and all the other vocational roles so necessary in bringing a blueprint’s intent to fruition. As […]