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Commercial Construction Project Planning: 3 Warning Signs Your Budget Might Go Bust

Budget is always a major consideration for our commercial construction clients, and as a general contractor we devote significant time to the budgeting process. While we do our best to provide budget estimates that are as accurate as possible, there are inevitably times when projects bids come in higher than the client expected, or that unanticipated costs push the job over-budget. Here are a few signs that, in our experience, indicate your project budget is more likely to bust:

Skimping on Professional Services

In a best-case scenario, a general contractor budgets a job based on thorough architectural and engineered drawings that encompass not only the client’s design intent, but also careful planning for everything from mechanical systems to cosmetic finishes. We also always recommend our clients invest in a proper existing conditions survey, which will alert us to any site issues we’ll need to mitigate and plan for in the budget.

But in reality, the quality of plans we receive to..

4 Commercial Construction Trends for Restaurant and Food Service Projects

It’s already been a busy year for Englewood’s Restaurant Construction division, with a wide variety of projects ranging from ground-up new construction and interior renovations to commercial kitchen work. As such, here are four commercial construction trends our team has observed and anticipates we’ll see shaping more restaurant and food service construction projects in the near future:

Tapping Into The Craft Beer Boom
There is seemingly no end in sight to the current craft beer craze, and national restaurant groups are tapping into this trend by not only introducing more brewery-based concepts, but also by expanding the beer offerings at existing restaurants. As a result, we’re seeing a change in the footprint of restaurants and how our clients are allocating space – particularly with new-construction projects where clients are dedicating more square footage to back-of-house beverage cold storage. For example, a BJ’s Brewhouse we recently completed in Livonia, Mich., has an entire co..

American Girl’s New York City Flagship Store: An Englewood Construction Retail Showcase

Earlier this year, one of our favorite clients, American Girl, announced plans to take its brand on the road via an American Girl musical debuting with a nationwide tour this fall. At Englewood Construction, we’re proud to say we’ve already been “on tour” with American Girl for the last 10 years, working with the popular retail brand to build, remodel and maintain American Girl Place stores across the country. In fact, our most recent project with American Girl was in New York City, not too far from the lights of Broadway – a new 38,000-square-foot American Girl Place flagship store at 75 Rockefeller Plaza.

For this Hard Hat Chat post, we thought we’d take a look back at this retail construction project and share photos from the finished space and behind-the-scenes details about the construction process, which was completed in November 2017.

Grand Entrances (And Tight Squeezes)

Shoppers can enter American Girl Place from its main entrance at 75 Rockefeller Plaza on West 52 Street, o..

CRE Construction Project Site Selection: 3 Tips for Finding the Perfect Match

When it comes to choosing a site for a commercial construction or CRE project, finding the perfect match between a brand or concept and an available space is one of the most important steps in the planning process. And for business owners and developers looking for guidance as they vet different options, there’s no better “matchmaker” to consult than an experienced commercial contractor who can point out the pros and cons of a location and the construction considerations that can make or break a project. Here are three key points we advise clients think about as they search for a site:

1. Does the site match up with infrastructure needs?
One important step to finding “happily ever after” with a new location is evaluating if it has the necessary infrastructure to function for its new purpose. Case in point, a developer once asked us to price out a retail-to-restaurant conversion on the first floor of a Chicago high rise. Because the space was originally built for retail, it wasn’t outf..

Emergency Commercial Facility Disaster Planning: 3 Takeaways from Recent Hurricanes

Earlier this fall, the entire country watched as hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria caused widespread destruction across Texas, Florida, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico. As I followed the media coverage leading up to and following these storms, my thoughts of course turned to the rebuilding process and post-hurricane construction work ahead for these communities. As a national commercial construction firm offering emergency commercial facility maintenance and repair services, we know it’s never easy to deal with damage to any property, much less on the scale of what a major natural disaster can cause. We also understand how important it is to have a commercial facility disaster plan in place ahead of time.

While hopefully most of us will never experience firsthand the result of a category 4 or 5 hurricane, these recent storms offer some good reminders to all commercial property owners and tenants about preparing for serious weather-related events that could potentially strike in their ar..