IMC Construction Featured in Construction Executive: City of Brotherly Construction
IMC Construction’s work on a 19-story office building in downtown Philadelphia was powered by ‘a true collaborative partnership’ that prioritized open communication and MWBE participation.
When Michael Lloyd got involved in the plans for 2222 Market Street as chief operating officer for IMC Construction in September 2020, the possibility of breaking ground on a 360,000-square-foot, 19-story office building in downtown Philadelphia was in doubt. Center City Philly hadn’t seen a new, non-Comcast commercial office building in more than three decades, and another general contractor had been in preconstruction on the project for more than two years without producing numbers that worked for Morgan Lewis, the law firm that planned to occupy the new high-rise.
Six weeks later, Lloyd and his team had managed to slash 7% from the budget—enough to get the green light for the $200-million project. Once they broke ground, IMC continued to focus on identifying ways to optimize efficiencies and avoid headaches. The company produced an Excel spreadsheet with, according to Lloyd, now IMC’s president and CEO, “over a thousand items that needed to be reconciled between the core, the shell and the fit-out documents.”
“Even though we didn’t necessarily have financial or schedule implications with all these issues, we knew that if they weren’t addressed, they would impact the timeline,” Lloyd says. “And if you’re not responsible, things that go wrong will eventually find their way to your plate.”
DESIGN-ASSIST MODEL
IMC began work on 2222 Market Street during the peak of supply-chain challenges and other uncertainties for the industry. To work around those issues, the company used a design-assist execution model, working with Gensler, the architecture firm in charge of the fit-out design; Thornton Thomasetti, the structural engineer; and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc., which was in charge of the fabrication phase and construction inspection. There were also a range of subcontractors involved in concrete, roofing, carpentry, steel and metal panels.
“There were issues with the structure impeding with the mechanical duct work and a variety of other concerns,” Lloyd says. “We focused on a true collaborative partnership throughout the entire process.”
That process included 75 meetings with all those subcontractors and partners that ended up identifying 15 potential problems with the facade and saving more than $750,000. Plenty of that work didn’t actually happen onsite, thanks to IMC’s seven-person virtual design and construction department. “Somewhere in central Pennsylvania, we constructed field samples,” Lloyd says. “These were huge sections of the walls that allowed us to do lots of water and air testing to ensure the prefabrication worked effectively.”
Offsite prefabrication was also crucial to maintaining a manageable crowd at the jobsite, which ranged from 90 to 125 workers at any one time, Lloyd notes, and avoiding “having lots of trades and workers on top of each other.”
LIFT EVERY VOICE
But no matter how many workers were there, the jobsite always ran smoothly—even with two general contractors working alongside each other for part of the project. “Structure Tone did the fit-out, and we overlapped for over nine months,” Lloyd says. “Normally, you might expect two large competitors to have disputes, but there was a spirit of open dialogue and partnership that prevented any of those issues.”
In addition to being able to keep everyone on the same page, Lloyd is proud of the many different voices that played a role in finishing 2222 Market Street in time for Morgan Lewis to take over the space in October 2023. It was a fitting experience for a project going up in the City of Brotherly Love—and built by IMC, the country’s largest minority-owned commercial general contractor.
“We had over 30% MWBE [minority- and women-owned business enterprises] participation,” Lloyd says, “and that was both at the contractor and vendor level as well as the workforce level. Being a project in the city center of this significance and reflecting the diversity of Philadelphia is a huge accomplishment.”
Original article, written by David McMillin can be found at City of Brotherly Construction – Construction Executive
