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A full-service construction firm with an innovative approach to design-build project management

Chris DiPaolo is the president and founder of PROTECS, a full-service design-build project and construction management firm. Headquartered in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, PROTECS focuses on serving private and public clients in high-tech and highly regulated sectors. With project sizes ranging from $50,000 to $50 million, the firm’s team has successfully designed and built more than 8 million square feet of space for use in such contexts as biotechnology, medical devices, food and dairy production, specialty chemicals manufacturing, data centers in mission-critical environments, and more. PROTECS is further distinguished by its proprietary approach to construction management, which reduces the time between inception and build by approximately 40%.

EDWIN WARFIELD: PROTECS is active in many different sectors and industries. Do you have a certain ideal client or project you look for?

CHRIS DIPAOLO: Our target clients are ones that really need and don’t have the internal resources to do what we do, which is deliver these complex projects. We act as an extension of their organization to facilitate and manage the entire process from start to finish. A lot of clients will go to an architect to start with the project, and maybe they’ll hire a project management group to oversee then the architecture and the engineering, and then they’ll hire a CM firm down the road as well, and then there are all these entities that the clients directly managing while he also has a day job. Our model affords people to be as involved in the project that they want to be, but at the same token understand that someone who is taking full accountability, they have a point of contact, and there’s someone that will communicate with them on a regular basis and has to on that side of the fence.

So, this model, which is probably one of the biggest surprises I’ve seen in the marketplace is that we are working for Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies that don’t have these internal resources, which is the ones that we target, and we go after. We’re a value-added proposition to them, which is where we want to be. We want to be adding value throughout the entire, all phases of the work that we’re doing. So, working for companies like the Strikers of the world, like Air Lockheed, like Ashland. We work for GSK. We work for all the big companies. There’s a lot of companies that I can give you names of—CD Diagnostics, STIX’s, or DaVitas of the world that you probably never heard of as well. Those are the companies that we also really enjoy working for, and like I said earlier, enjoy seeing them grow and we develop with them and really become a strategic partner over the long haul of their operations.

I think an ideal client for us is one who knows their business and what they want to achieve, but who doesn’t know the real estate and the engineering and construction, the permitting aspects, and the compliance aspect to the degree they would have to if they try to do this themselves. I’ve seen so many clients that try to do these things themselves and run projects on their own, and there really is no upside for that person or individual or that company at the end, because they’re not doing it day in day out like we are. A client that really has an overall need, who’s clear about what their needs are for growth and they have a good outlook—you know, three, five, ten years they want to grow to—it’s never too early to bring us into a project lifecycle and get us involved. We can help preliminary master plan, understand their needs, and whether they execute that plan today or in the future, it’s something they have, they can put their hands around and share with board members, shareholders, partners to have some basis for.

And taking it to the next level—that’s really where we shine. When we advance that and you say, “go,” we have the expertise and skills to not only do it cost effectively but do it in a fast-tracked manner. Anyone would tell you in our industry that clients wait too late to make a decision to either find a building or renovate a project and have unrealistic expectations of how long it takes to do, whereas we can really ground you in that early on. The biggest key thing is understanding what you can afford. Our Target Costing approach to drive to the cost goals as well as the performance and compliance goals is key upfront because there are many ways to skin a cat in this business. I built labs for $250 per square foot, I built some for $550 per square foot. They do the exact same thing. It’s based on the risk tolerance of that client and the overall strategic objectives of that client at the end of the day. You can do it for two different cost bases that could either make or break your company in the long run. We all know capital is king. If you want to hang onto as much capital as you can over the long term of delivering a capital project like this, you should be calling us.

Connect with Christopher on LinkedIn

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC's common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer  Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit www.bgcpartners.com.

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