Blu Dot 8751 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, CA
Completing extremely complex and logistically challenging projects is not for every company. High-profile clients require comprehensive construction management services. Everything from site reviews and scheduling, to budgeting and cost analysis.
Today we talk about Shawmut Design and Construction and we sit down with the Vice President, Greg Skalaski to learn more about the Company.
Industry: Commercial Construction Management with a Retail focus
Location: Boston, Providence, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles
Completed Projects: +10,000
Employees: 1200
4URSPACE Member since: 2015
Tell us about your company. What kind of product or service do you provide?
Shawmut Design and Construction is a $1.3 billion leading national construction management firm with a reputation for completing extremely complex and logistically challenging projects for the most high-profile clients in the industry—including Apple (200+ projects), Louis Vuitton, Primark, and Burberry to name a few. We provide comprehensive construction management services—everything from site reviews and scheduling, to budgeting and cost analysis.
How many employees does your company currently have? Do you have offices in different States?
Shawmut has over 1,200 employees and eight offices nationwide, including Boston, Providence, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Our retail division is headquartered in New York and works nationally.
Apple Store at The Fashion Centre At Pentagon City
Clients love doing business with us because we focus on the experience while ensuring our clients have fun along the way. We want to always deliver a 10 for our clients. Delivering a project on time and on budget? Those things are a given—they are important, but they are expected. For us, a 10 means that the client had such an amazing experience, that they won’t ever want to work with anyone else.
Shawmut was founded on providing the most differentiated customer experience in the industry. As we continue to grow, we have worked to maintain that small company, personalized service and feel, while growing into a sophisticated organization. There’s no doubt about it, we’re a large company and we’re proud of that. We’re also proud of our highly personalized service, the kind you’d expect from a smaller company. To help ensure we keep the personalized service our clients need, each of our project teams, led by a project executive, operate and act like a $20 – $50 million company. Because our project executives handle one or two clients at a time, it feels like a small business owner running a small segment.
In which geographic area did you complete the majority of your projects?
Shawmut works nationwide—anywhere our clients need us. We primarily work in urban, logistically challenging environments with a focus on the New York, Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles markets. Shawmut has an especially large presence in New York having completed over 1,000 projects in the big apple, including over 80 flagships on Madison Ave., Fifth Ave., 57th Street, and SoHo. Shawmut’s most iconic projects include the Chanel 57th, Louis Vuitton 57th Street Flagship, Le Bernardin, and The Met Breuer.
Is your company specialized in completing projects in a specific industry, e.g. Food & Beverage?
Our retail division builds the most complex, iconic, and luxurious stores and has established Shawmut as the premier retail builder nationwide. In addition to retail, Shawmut also focuses on hospitality, academic, corporate interiors, sports venues, hotels, and healthcare and life sciences.
Tell us about one specific project you worked on and which challenges you solved?
Shawmut recently completed thirteen projects at the Westfield World Trade Center, the most of any contractor involved in the project.
Our clients at the Westfield World Trade Center include Stuart Weitzman, Pandora, Charles Tyrwhitt, Hugo Boss, Tumi, Vince Camuto, Links of London, Aesop, Christian Dior, Designer Eyes, Folli Follie, The Ford Experience Center, and Epicerie Boulud.
We knew these projects would require massive coordination and communication between owners, project teams, Westfield, and the Port Authority (each project averaged 1,915 square-feet with 21-week schedules). We began meeting with Westfield two years ago in order to proactively devise project approaches to address and resolve all of the challenges. Once awarded the work, we brought all parties together early, to share information we learned and give invaluable guidance on how to save time and money by increasing efficiencies and reducing redundancies. For example, working closely with the concrete subcontractor, the loading dock master, and Westfield, Shawmut came up with the idea to push buggies from the loading dock (three levels below) and use freight elevators to pour the floors—this method quickly became the standard for how pours were done by all contractors in the World Trade Center.
VINCE CAMUTO World Trade Center
Which milestones are you planning to achieve in the next 12 months?
Shawmut is projecting record-breaking revenue of $1.35 billion for 2017—something we are all extremely proud of. The firm is also celebrating the NYC office’s 15th anniversary this year, and will have completed 1,000 projects in NYC by year end.
What do you like most about 4URSPACE?
4URSPACE provides a rare inside view of the retail construction and design industry. You can quickly, and easily, find the latest, unbiased news on vendors, partners, and clients. You can simply search a job and find out who works on it. I also look forward to reading the weekly Newsletters—there’s always interesting points of view on lots of different topics.
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