The Van Pelt Construction Services family extends its warmest wishes to our clients, colleagues, partners and friends during this holiday season. We are grateful for the many ways in which you enrich our professional lives and we look forward to building with you to even greater heights in 2018.
It’s that time of year again when people take a moment to reflect, express appreciation and give good old-fashioned thanks. Here at VPCS, we have a lot to be thankful for – individually and as an organization. In the spirit of the season, we asked our team to share a few words about the things they’re grateful for and have included some of those thoughts here. We wish all of our friends, families, clients and colleagues a joyful Thanksgiving, overflowing with all the things that matter the most.
~~~~~
HOLLY MADDOX: I am grateful for the willingness to try for better things tomorrow. I am grateful that my blessings are bigger than my problems. And I am grateful for those, good and bad, past and present, who are a part of my journey, and those who invited me to play a part in theirs.
ANGELITA SANCHEZ: I am thankful for many things: I am alive, my kids and family are all healthy, I have a job and love the people I work with, and I have a five-minute commute. I am currently working on the VPCS project at the Terra Linda High School, which means I get to see my 15-year-old son every day – and sometimes twice a day!
THIDA CHHIT: This holiday season, there are many things that I am grateful and thankful for. I have been blessed to have supportive and loving family and friends, who have been my guiding light through life. I’m thankful for my wonderful daughter who has not only brought me so much joy and strength, but also new meaning as a mother. This year has also blessed me with positive changes in my career and I am so grateful for VPCS for the opportunity to begin a new chapter. I am especially thankful for my manager (Kelli) and my colleagues (Mony, Brian and Cesar) who have been instrumental in supporting me.
NIKKI UNGER: I am thankful to be able to work at a wonderful company and have such an amazing boss who has encouraged me not only to do my best with my team, but to pursue passions I never thought I could. Eric Berger is truly an inspiration and an A+ mentor.
KEVIN SMITH: I am thankful for my lifelong friends and my new friends. These are all people who have become part of my tribe, and who make me feel welcome and loved as part of their family. They are all responsible for keeping the holiday spirit alive in my heart, and I am thankful to them every day.
BRIAN CAMERON: This year, I am especially thankful for the support of my family and friends, including my VPCS family. I am also thankful because I feel I have grown as a person over the last year and I know I have great people in my life to support me when I need it the most.
ERIC VAN PELT: I am thankful that I work with such an impressive group of professionals who take our responsibility to the communities we build for as seriously as I do.
KELLI VAN PELT JURGENSON: From a work perspective, I am thankful for my male colleagues. In this day and age, that may seem strange, but the vast majority of the men I work with show me respect and treat me as an equal . . . from the job site to the office. It gives me hope that the tide can change. From a personal perspective, I am forever thankful to my family for being my anchor of love, as I work daily in very tough industry.
MIKE VAN PELT: In the last few years, VPCS has grown considerably. During that time we’ve had the opportunity to hire several new employees. I am thankful for all of our long-standing employees and their enduring loyalty, and for our new employees and their fresh attitudes. The VPCS family helps me to sleep well at night, knowing our projects are in good hands.
MARK VAN PELT: I’m thankful for our clients, new and long-standing, who put their trust in VPCS every day in this complex business. I’m also thankful for our employees who put in the long hours and dedication it takes to make this machine run. And a special thanks to their significant others who support their efforts.
November 21, 2017
We’ve all heard the adage that you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure. This is certainly solid advice in certain contexts. But I believe there’s great value in building professionally appropriate personal relationships with clients. It’s the kind of intangible that can measurably benefit both sides in any transaction.
Making an effort to get to know clients on a human level is not just good for business; it’s good for business people. It forges stronger work relationships while making the process of doing the work more enjoyable.
Some tips:
Be accessible. The most important element of building client relationships is accessibility. My brother, Mike, and I have always made it clear to the people we work for that when they call, we’ll pick up. We hear from clients all the time that our availability and responsiveness is one of the things we’re known for. From that foundation of professional accessibility can grow a sense of trust – valuable in business; invaluable in human interactions.
Build communication into the routine. I make it a point to check in by phone regularly with clients – including those with whom we have active projects as well as those we haven’t worked with for years. These outreach calls might only last a few minutes and may center on things other than business. But they’re personal touch points; they remind my clients that I’m thinking of them and that I care about what’s going on in their lives (not just in their jobs).
Honor the boundaries. At VPCS, the majority of our clients work for public agencies and are bound by certain rules and regulations that limit their ability to accept gifts or favors. As such, some of our clients won’t even let us pick up the tab at lunch. But true relationship-building doesn’t require material objects; it requires time and attention.
Model this behavior. Mike and I learned this business from our father, who actually built decades-long friendships with numerous clients. He was genuinely interested in getting to know the people he worked with and for. Building relationships happens easily for Mike and me because we grew up watching how it’s done and we model those behaviors for the next generation of VPCS leaders. It’s part of the DNA of both our family and our firm.
Make connections at every level. I’ve become a fan of the Project Partnering concept that elevates problems to the next level of management and helps maintain relationships that have developed. It aligns neatly with the subject I’m talking about here because it’s built on the same premise: when people are connected on a deeper level, they tend to make a deeper effort with one another. In other words, fewer conflicts arise between professionals who share a personal rapport. The fewer the conflicts, the fewer the potential headaches, delays and risk for everyone concerned.
Get more out of your work. It’s true that positive client relationships can make projects go more smoothly. But it has the power to yield a much more important benefit: a roster of people who are part of your career and your life.
By Mark Van Pelt
Precision is always important in the construction business, but those of us who work on hospital projects understand the critical nature of what we do. In the healthcare segment, doing our job well can literally be a matter of life and death. We know this, we abide by it, we come to work every day ready to recommit to it.
These hospitals care for the communities where we live. And sometimes, the care they deliver hits even closer to home. Very close, in fact.
During the 18 months I’ve spent on the NorthBay Medical Center campus, several members of my extended family have been admitted as patients to that very facility for one reason or another. There have been days when I’ve been in my trailer on the job site looking over at the existing hospital structure knowing that one of my loved ones is inside. As the hospital busily caters to the ebbs and flows of patients and their needs, someone important to me is one of those people receiving care, ordering lunch, changing the TV channel or engaging in any of the other normal activities that fill an in-patient’s routine. And they know to expect me as a visitor every day during their stay – sometimes several times a day, given the proximity of my “office.”
It’s a strange dual position to be in, to be sure. As project manager, my job is to ensure that our hospital construction team delivers the highest possible work product. As family member, my job is to reassure my loved ones that they’ll be well taken care of while they’re in the facility I’m working on.
The good news is that I am confident at NorthBay that both of those goals are being met. My professional role allows me to have frequent interactions with the medical center’s staff. In the process, I’ve gotten to know them and their strict individual and collective commitments to quality. NorthBay’s doctors, nurses and administrators have weighed in at various points of the design phase to ensure that the new, improved medical center’s patient spaces function as efficiently as possible. We standardize things wherever we can so that clinical staff knows exactly where to find critical pieces of equipment without thinking twice. In situations where time is of the essence, they won’t have to worry about wasting precious seconds searching for what they need. We also zero in on all the ways that the building’s design can enhance safety in the event of an emergency, such as during an earthquake or fire, when certain patients may need extra help getting where they need to go.
Chances are, everyone is a hospital patient at some point or another. Even me. I recently found myself on the receiving end of hospital care (not at NorthBay), which gave me yet another perspective. While in the hospital, I had every confidence in my healthcare team, so I shifted my focus to the physical structure itself. I assessed every nook and cranny, evaluating the design and construction. Admittedly, I might have done a few things differently had I been in charge of building the place, but it passed my general inspection. (Spoiler alert: I’m fine.)
Quality construction is important in every building. But hospitals are more than just buildings. They’re temporary shelters for people who depend on them for care, safety and security at what is often an extremely vulnerable time. Every patient inside a hospital is somebody’s parent, child, sibling or friend – sometimes all at once. It’s not an exaggeration to say that being part of a hospital construction team makes us part of people’s care teams.
On any construction project – but especially a hospital project – the difference is in the details. At VPCS, we focus on the smallest elements of our work as a way of building a better whole. It’s one way for us to improve the environment of care.
By Eric Van Pelt
On a recent visit to one of our job sites, I noticed something that struck me as pretty profound. We were getting ready to pour concrete for a large foundation on a sizeable project that had been designed and planned – and was being built – with the help of very sophisticated technological tools. Still, before even a drop of concrete could be poured, the foundation bottom had to be cleaned of loose soil. And sure enough, there was a laborer down in the middle of those forms and rebar with a paper cup in one hand and a stick in the other, scouring that foundation bottom for dirt clods. Because it’s a job that has to be done on a site no matter what, and it’s not something that a computer can take care of.
Forty-some-odd years ago, I was the guy on cup-and-stick clod patrol. Now I’m one of the guys who walk around sites reviewing plans on hand-held digital devices.
In my career, I’ve seen technology fundamentally change the way we work. I remember back when fax machines started showing up on job sites. We huddled around them completely befuddled, like cavemen seeing fire for the first time. Soon, they became commonplace, and RFIs, submittals, change orders, etc. were being faxed instead of delivered via snail mail. Gradually, other electronic tools began to eclipse their analog predecessors. Laser levels replaced water levels; electronic surveying devices replaced slide rules; GPS grading monitors replaced guinea hoppers.
Those early innovations certainly simplified certain steps, but didn’t really alter the basic way we did things. But as the technology became more sophisticated, design and construction processes started to rely more heavily on them. Now, we just wouldn’t be able to do the job as efficiently or affordably without these modern technological tools.
But let’s get back to our friend with the cup and the stick. There’s no device in the world that could accomplish the task he was doing. Every job site needs someone down in those foundations removing that loose dirt. And technology can’t replace the laborer who trowels concrete or the carpet installer who kneels down to glue a piece into place. In this business, shovels and wheelbarrows will always be seen alongside cutting-edge technological tools.
Our job is to make sure our clients are getting the best of the old and the new. At VPCS, there are enough of us who still remember the pre-tech days and have adapted to the new ways of doing things. We also have an enthusiastic young crop of leaders who have only ever done this work in the digital age. Each generation teaches the other. Just as my brother and I learned from our dad that integrity is the most valuable thing in any toolkit, we’ve worked hard to pass that insight on to the upcoming leaders in our firm while encouraging them to embrace the new ideas that benefit the industry. And we learn from our younger counterparts how important it is to be open to the innovations that help us improve our work product.
Yes, technology is critical to our business and makes us better at what we do. But let’s face it: you can’t build anything without getting a little dirt on your hands. To be good at this job, you have to know how to work with both.
By Mike Van Pelt
When my brother, Mike, and I opened VPCS in 1996 and printed our first-ever capabilities brochure, we promoted ourselves as “experienced construction and project managers.” Back then, that was an apt and accurate way to describe us. But in the 21 years since, we’ve evolved to do and be so much more. (And we’d prefer to think that we’re a couple of decades wiser, not older.)
These days, in addition to being even more experienced construction managers (CMs), we are also highly skilled program managers (PMs) capable of overseeing large-scale multi-site initiatives.
We’re currently hard at work on behalf of San Rafael City Schools, having been selected in 2016 to serve as PMs overseeing the eight-year, $269 million district-wide improvement program made possible by the passages of Measures A and B. While it’s not the largest PM assignment we’ve ever taken on (in terms of overall budget adjusted to current dollar value), it is definitely one of the most extensive and complex. It also serves as an interesting case study. By honing our CM skills over the course of decades, we have evolved into PMs capable of managing such a significant assignment.
Our first task in San Rafael was to evaluate the existing masterplan for the program. We worked closely with the District and designers (all top-notch professionals) to realign the masterplan to reflect the District’s latest goals and updated the budget accordingly. We are currently moving forward – getting things rolling in terms of permitting, design, scheduling, procurement, and community relations for every facet of the program.
Given the duration of any far-reaching program, market dynamics can shift dramatically as things go along. This will certainly be the case in San Rafael, as we are in the midst of a historically saturated marketplace in which prices are steadily on the rise. It’s our job to predict how those fluctuations will affect such factors as material costs and availability of labor, both in the near- and long-term. Between now and the end of the projected eight-year program, we need to keep a close and constant eye on budgets and schedules to minimize the possibility of surprises or interruptions.
Meanwhile, we must also remember that we’re here to serve the micro-communities within the district we represent. Any program of this size and scope is going to elicit a range of responses from members of the neighborhoods where work is taking place. Things can get political and personal very quickly, particularly in public forums. An element of any PM assignment is engaging in open, constructive communication with the community and ensuring citizens that the District is listening to their concerns. To be sure, this is a big part of our role in all of our program communities throughout the state.
The bottom line: program management is an incredibly complex business. The key to success is knowing how to anticipate and control the potential chaos of it all. I’m very proud to report that our San Rafael VPCS team is striving to maintain this control on a daily basis. We’re well suited to this assignment precisely because we’ve been in the trenches on so many individual sites (both in San Rafael and in dozens of other districts). We know exactly what to expect on the single-job scale, so we’re equipped to handle things on the much larger scale.
I see a lot of parallels here. Just as Mike and I have carefully scaled our business from its 1996 infancy to the robust operation we oversee today, so too have we scaled the firm’s ability to take on more substantial contracts. We’ve grown from our humble CM-centric beginnings into a regionally-respected company capable of managing virtually any program. Whatever the budget, the size of the community, the necessary staff, or the potential challenges, VPCS is up to the task. We may not be as young as we once were, but our CM and PM clients definitely get the benefit of those 21 years of know-how!
By Mark Van Pelt