Written by: Adam Gazaleh

OverviewAEC-Feb-Summary

Francina Price, Founder and CEO of Champions Integrated Facilities Management, delivered a thorough and informative overview of how the coronavirus pandemic has affected commercial real estate management and how her company has adapted and thrived in this unprecedented environment. Price talked about the challenges that she faced leading commercial construction projects for her clients across over 30 states, many of whom are Fortune 100 and 500 companies. She says that her goal is to leave clients with a facility that they can efficiently maintain once the project is complete. She recounts how the pandemic has forced project managers to be more flexible when it comes to schedule and budget and think about germ safety, an area that many project managers did not have to consider before. In addition, with many companies implementing stricter health and safety protocols, the way companies maintain facilities has had to quickly evolve. Francina Price’s presentation gave a unique perspective, and left participants more informed about the world of facilities management.

Takeaways

  • Schedules are not linear. When everything is in flux with constant changes, a PM needs to introduce more flexibility into the schedule and be willing to move things around as many times as necessary.
  • Procure materials early and locally whenever possible; be sure to build in incremental increases in the cost of materials into your project budget and plan for longer than usual delays.
  • Remember that your team is made up of people, and we are all facing new challenges that we may have never encountered in the past.

Next Event

Join us at the next PMI Atlanta AEC Forum on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021.

Keynote Presentation: "Managing Delivery for Machine Learning Products" featuring, Zorina Alliata, Sr. Global Machine Learning Strategist at Amazon.

Register at https://pmiatlanta.org/events/event-list/architectural-engineering-construction-aec-forum-210309


About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves the Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.