Jessica Joly spoke to the class about the trials and tribulations of her Publix shopping center development. Jessica is a developer for Stiles Corporation.
The Publix development seemed to follow Murphy's Law - if something CAN go wrong, it WILL. Through the permitting process, the municipality was trying to get them to agree to give 35 feet of space up for a future road widening. Due to some research on the possibility, Jessica and her team successfully defended the point that a widening wouldn't really be possible and ended up agreeing to 7 feet instead, leaving much more land open to the development.
Additionally, during construction, they noticed the façade of the building didn't fully cover the view of the rooftop units. They had to re-design and construct a fix real-time.
Both of these issues ate into the construction contingency budget by 2-3%.
My takeaway from Jessica's presentation is to always plan for things to go wrong from planning through construction and operations. To mitigate this possibility, her story drove home the point that solid due diligence in the design process can go a long way toward solving these issues before they really begin.
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