Owners Push for 'Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals'
On Sept. 17, Construction Partner Gregory Meeder moderated the Chicago Building Congress Owners Panel – a high-powered panel of large construction owners assembled by the Chicago Building Congress – at its annual fall Economic Summit. There were six panelists at the summit representing $8 billion in current construction and design projects with more than 250 architects, engineers and contractors in attendance. The panel included construction industry owners from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Archdiocese of Chicago, the University of Illinois, Advocate Health Care and Northwestern Medicine. Mr. Meeder is the immediate past president of the Chicago Building Congress.
The panel's "2020 Vision" plan, filled with B-HAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals) was covered on the Burnham Works blog and included remarks by Mr. Meeder and York Chan, the administrator of facilities for Downers Grove-based Advocate Health Care. The owners' plans discussed the technological needs created by today's smart buildings. Also, these sophisticated owners are calling for greater modular construction by the year 2020, where 60-90 percent of construction will be completed offsite in a factory-controlled environment, then transported or shipped to a final destination and placed on a concrete foundation to form a finished building. The result of such construction could make the B-HAG of multimillion-dollar construction projects – with no change orders or safety incidents – a reality.