Insights from a Civil Engineer Turned Developer

Scott Baumberger: Hello, and welcome to the creative viz podcast. We discuss topics in architecture, development, and visual media. Today, I'm really excited to have Sam Mehra with Boos Development, he is a development project manager there. Welcome, Sam. It's great to see you.

Sam Mehra: Thank you, Scott, for having me. Love to have this platform to discuss things.

Scott Baumberger: That's great. Thank you. We were talking a minute ago. You have a really interesting background.  I understand you studied engineering, then work for a time in construction and are now on the development side. Can you walk us through that and how that happened?

Sam Mehra: I started my bachelor's in civil engineering in India. When you do the bachelor's, you basically get a small amount of knowledge about different fields in civil engineering. So you will get to understand traffic, you get to understand environmental everything so you get a little bit of exposure to everything. The most important thing that I liked from that experience was the construction management That is where I was like, okay. This is my niche. This is what I need to work on. And to work on that I came to the USA to do my master's at UF - University of Florida. That is the path that I took to make sure that I constantly work on something that I love. To me, construction management is something that I love to do.

I'm passionate about, whenever you go into a market, anything that you do, you want to understand the details before you start to work on the big things. That is my approach. You build your foundation strong so that  you can build a tall building on it. My approach was that let's build my foundation strong by making sure that I have exposed myself to subcontractor work. Understand what they work on, how they do work.

What are their emotions, feelings? What do they go through while they are on site? First three years of my career I spent on going through that. Making sure that what is the basic approach of subcontractors when they are approaching a project. Once I understood that, once I understood their process, once I understood how things work over here, I was like, okay, let me go venture in GC world now, because now I understood subcontractor world.

I can hire subcontractors properly. Then I started working on the GC side. More general contractor work I did for three, four years. Then I understood, GC work . The processes are in, I understand what to do, how to hire subcontractors, how to make sure that the productivity of the project goes properly.

My approach is always to keep growing, learning, growing, learning and growing. That is proponents of what I go by once I learn and I understand things. I just don't want to stick in a place where I'm like, okay, now I cannot learn anymore. This is it. As soon as I get to that point, I'm like, okay, I need to learn more.

That is how I ventured into real estate development. I knew, let's say 40 percent of what happens in development. I learned 60 percent of what goes on, a lot more on permitting entitlements. How to deal with the county, cities, design work. Part and parcel of things were always involved in my projects before, but taking it hands on and putting effort in it, it is a different story.

That is basically my journey and journey will keep going on. I'll keep trying to venture, keep learning and keep trying to grow as much as I can. 

Scott Baumberger: Absolutely, I don't care how old you are, how many years you've been doing it, there's always more to learn. It's such a unique industry we're in. There's always innovation and so much complexity, and every project is different.

There's a discovery with every single one. I'd like to explore, your background, particularly in construction. How does that affect when you approach a development project? How does that background shape your approach to it?

Sam Mehra:  That is a very interesting question, and very good question because see the thing is when you have seen how subcontractors work when you have been in their shoes and then you were in shoes of general contractor, you know exactly how they are thinking. 

What is their approach to do the work? How they will get to the end result that is giving you the building? What are the factors that affect the productivity, the quality of work? When you look at entire picture, let's say development of a real estate property is a big picture. 

Construction is a 40 percent 50 percent part of it because everything is dependent on construction. You get to understand the costs better. You get to understand the timelines better. Everything that is related to construction eventually affects your project plus the planning. The planning of a project becomes better because now I'm thinking okay I'm gonna put a budget together, but I'm realistically thinking what factors will affect this budget?

While we are going through this timeline, then I'm thinking about , Someone would tell me that it would take eight months, but I have built this project myself before I know it takes six months so I understand I can counter check those things and then the price wise. Let's say a site cost comes in and they say that okay, for 2 acre development, it will take 2 million dollars. But being a GC, I know that it doesn't take 2 million dollars. It takes only 1.4 million. All those factors affect the project. And the planning of the project. The more you can affect the planning of the project. rather than Doing the planning while you are doing the project Gives you a better result.

Scott Baumberger:  Absolutely. It's so interesting. Can you point to recent project where that might've come into play? 

Sam Mehra: I just did a project in Minnesota. We were building an Auntie Anne’s and a Jamba Juice, it is a two in one store. What helped me go through that project was that I have built a lot of QSRs. So I understood the cost of the project. I understood it only takes us 110 days to build it and timelines were good.

We were able to get through the approval of the project in the REC stage pretty quickly because I was able to put all those factors together. You're always learning this market. What I learned from that project was interesting. weather is such a big factor.

We started building I think in August. Our 110 days was going to expire, but we're going to complete let's say mid November was our target date. Now, obviously we had some issues with the constructability and things like that. But as we go by it, we found out the winter, the fall weather came early.

The snow started early. We were not able to do our asphalt. We were not able to do our landscaping because it was not suitable to do it that climate, although we got the TCO, we were able to open the project, but that is what I learned. Now, when I'm working in that climate. I would know that I cannot do these things and I will put timeline in my project that these 2 things would have to be done later or how to maneuver them. I would say on the budgeting side, we were very good. We were able to keep everything in grabs. The only other issue that I can remember and was a good learning experience was that, it was snowing when we were doing the due diligence so ground was hard. We were not able to do the landscape. This site had a hill on it, so on 1 side of the property, there was a hill that was 20 feet high. We were not able to have a geotech on site. We designed our entire retaining wall on the basis of the geotech that we did on the site, but we were not able to do the geotech on that.

As the entire timeline went by and we were ready to start the construction, we realized, Oh, that thing is not done. We need to go make sure that the geotech matches to what we have already encountered on the site. And interestingly, that didn't match. We had to revise the designs that delayed our process a little bit.

Like I said, I look at everything as a learning experience. Now I learned from it. I would make sure that it never happens

Scott Baumberger: Exactly. I imagine you have a buffers, contingencies for things that come up. And so that's going to be a different thing on every project, right?

Sam Mehra: We definitely try to put as much buffer, like 5 percent contingency to cover these things, but. It is more about the productivity of a project. When something like that happens now, you have to stop. You have things start to stall a little bit or GC is still trying to figure out.

Okay. I have this problem. How am I going to resolve it? Meanwhile, your subcontractors cannot come to site and work on the regular stuff. So I feel like it still affects the productivity of your project. That is why I prefer to do as much planning as you can in the starting and look at all the factors.

There are so many other factors. Yes, we will miss some of them, but if you have gone through these issues before try to look at all the factors possible so that You have a very well planned project when you go on site or when you even start the designing process.

Scott Baumberger: Absolutely. It's so interesting. I understand working on a project in Florida. We're talking about Minnesota. doing projects all over the country. When you are putting those teams together what do you look for when you're assembling teams for new development?

Sam Mehra: I have the approach of accountability - say you are hiring someone to work for you. You're gonna dig deeper to make sure that this is a good fit. They communicate better. They're accountable for the work. They're going to perform and we work as a good productive team I look for it and everything.

When I am looking for people who i'm going to work with i'm going to try to look at all these qualities before we do a contract. We are going to do a lot of conversations. We are going to talk about the project I'm gonna see how quickly you're gonna Send me the proposal. If you said you're going to send it by Friday, did you send it by Friday?

Are you delayed ? What is your understanding of the project? Also, I want to go into your history, how much of this you are being exposed to, or are you going to just do it 1st time? Because that is so important with development. Knowing the infrastructure, how to plan, how the permits will happen, what the county or city is looking for, because some people when they commit to these things and don't have that experience, then that learning curve.

Causes issues during the project. , I prefer people to learn, but don't learn on my project. Yes, I want you to learn, but learn with an expert while they are doing the project. Not taking on my project as a learning project. Those are the things I really focus on. I want everyone to be accountable as much as I am accountable for the actions that I take.

I want you to take the accountability for the actions that you take, because in the end, this is a partnership. You and I are partners. Your progress your success and my progress and success are both interdependent So let's look at it in that way And if you do better i'll do better and we all will go forward in the right direction

Scott Baumberger: Great attitude. I love it. Not every project goes well. I know that there are a number of, challenges for a lot of us in the industry, at this moment. What are some of your biggest challenges that you're seeing right now?

Sam Mehra: The challenges on a project are generally when you didn't plan properly. Let's say I'm working on a project. That is a 10 acre project right now and, it is at the final stages of completing the site work but the issues that comes on is, we did not design the turn lane properly or the structure should not be here - it has to be moved now. Sometimes when things happen, which Should have been planned properly beforehand and we should have looked at those things in detail and have not thought about it what it does is it delays the project. Obviously this is delaying the timeline of our project and delaying the productivity of the site contractor.

Also the biggest issue nowadays I'm seeing is the accountability with people. What they are working on. For some reason, either they get too busy, they pick up too many projects and then their commitment to a project goes down. They do not put all the efforts in trying to close out the project get the work done in time. That is one of the things that we have faced a lot. When people are not taking accountability and that is why I talked about why accountability is so important because if you take accountability for your actions It helps us so much. I don't like to micromanage. I like to give you all the freedom to do your work but at least give me the results that we talked about. Okay, this will be delivered in two days. Please do it in two days not five days not ten days two days is what we talked about delivered in two days. These are some of the things that we are seeing a lot. I don't know if COVID had some kind of effect on it, how people were working during that time but that accountability, I feel , has to come back, has to be what we should focus on.

Scott Baumberger: That's interesting. What do you think might help in that regard? Is it like you mentioned subcontractors there, are they potentially inexperienced in the field or with time that might get better.

Sam Mehra: I think there are two factors to it. One is obviously the experience. The second is your attitude towards the work. When you are working on a project, I have an attitude of I want to deliver the best product for you. That is my attitude. It is not about money, it's not about, what I'm going to make from this project.

It is more about how I can deliver the best product for you. All my efforts would be towards to make sure that The product has the quality it is delivered in time and it is in budget when you focus on Producing good product giving people services the money comes to you as a byproduct. People are focusing too much on trying to gain more profits rather than Giving people good service, good service brings you more clients, brings you more profit.

We should always focus on our product and quality that we give people and be proud of it.

Scott Baumberger: Absolutely. Well said. I couldn't agree more. I think that's true throughout our entire industry, and beyond. Thanks for sharing that. Do you have any success stories? Anything that's working particularly well for you right now? Love to hear these.

Sam Mehra: The approach that I have taken with doing a lot of due diligence on who I am working with and understanding their characteristics and how they work on their projects. Even going to the detail with doing multiple meetings with them even before we Have signed the contracts.

I think that has helped Me a lot. That is what I would attest to is that The more you start to understand the people you are working with I think that has helped me a lot to make sure that we are understanding each other properly because a lot is dependent on communication. What is happening a lot is that I would say X the person on the other side didn't understand it as X. It is Y for her. Then there is a miscommunication that goes on all along that project. The communication part that I have realized is very important. No matter what happens, as long as you communicate with each other on what the deadlines are, what we are trying to achieve and are we on the same page.

Throughout the process that has helped me a lot. That is one of the most important things that I have learned throughout my life that is what I focus on doing on everything.

Scott Baumberger: Absolutely. Really well said there. I couldn't agree with you more on that front. That just really speaks to the heart of the podcast. Getting people to share their stories and learn from each other, hearing other experiences. Thank you so much, Sam. I really appreciate your time with us today.

It's been a pleasure. I've learned a ton. Thank you so much for coming on.

Sam Mehra: I want to thank you for putting this show together. This is a really important initiative. This is what I was looking forward to. What I have always focused on is that let's not make our own mistakes if we can learn from someone else's mistake, and that is so important. For some reason we forget that. Everyone is on their own journey, why don't we learn from each other's experience and work good as a group, rather than thinking that I'm the only horse in the race, there are so many horses in the race. really appreciate your effort over here.

Scott Baumberger: Oh, well thank you, Sam. A great reminder, let's keep those lines of communication open. Let's keep the conversation going. Really appreciate it today. With that, we're going to wrap things up. Thank you so much for listening in and we'll see you on the next one