McCarthy Building Companies and its architect partner, EHDD, in 2019 landed a strategic, three-building corporate headquarters for one of the largest tech companies in the world. Excited by the win, the Design-Build Entity (DBE) quickly got to work on aligning the team’s culture and project objectives with those of its new client. Then the unthinkable happened: COVID-19 hit and the collaborative team had to suddenly go 100% remote.

In a newly released case study of the project, key members of the McCarthy team discuss how they leaned heavily on Join to create a “one-team” culture, collaboratively solve big project challenges (i.e., rapidly expiring entitlements), and manage the complex TVD process on the project.

In regard to the latter, McCarthy used Join to organize the TVD project into “Functional Teams,” or by major scope: site, envelope, structure, MEP, interiors, etc. McCarthy’s project team leaders then taught everyone how the budgeting and estimating process works in Join, explains Vice President/Project Executive Mike Gilpin. “We even did mock exhibits (in chat rooms because we were remote) of how to do a successful Join Item [or decision] in a Functional Group.” That involved demonstrating how a Functional Team might have an idea, price it, refine it, and present it to the owner in the weekly TVD cadence for decision-making and ultimately incorporation.

Gilpin explains that the owner liked Join so much that they wanted to use it in the construction phase, beyond the design and preconstruction phase.  In response, McCarthy and the team decided to use the platform to track contingency, even before Join had introduced its contingency tracking module. “That way the owner constantly understood the upper and lower bounds of all the pending changes to the job at any given moment,” Gilpin says.

The outcome of using Join on this highly technical project? In spite of big project risks, the team delivered on its promise of building a world-class work environment for the owner’s valued employees. And it did so on schedule and below the target budget. “On this project, we felt that the way to drive [owner satisfaction] was to organize ourselves to make decisions effectively and then have that transparency,” says Sr. Vice President & Business Unit Leader Derek Fitzgerald. Join gave the team the power to do just that.

Read the entire case study, including how Join puts the joy into OAC meetings, here.

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