Inside Third & Bond: Week 75

Today, the Hudson Companies bloggers introduce to another key member of the Third & Bond team…

What is your role in the Third + Bond project?
I am a construction project manager for Third + Bond.

How long have you been with Hudson and how’d you end up here?
I’ve been with Hudson since July 2008. I was working with Plaza Construction basically in the same type of position as Hakan [link to Hakan’s interview] and I was pretty happy there. But I always wanted to see what it was like on the developer’s side and so I submit my resume by email to Hudson when I saw the opportunity.

Have you always been in construction?
I grew up in Leningrad, Soviet Union which is once again known as St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the most beautiful city in the world. When I went back two years ago for a visit, I got completely lost in my own hometown because they changed the street names back to the pre-Soviet names. [Editor’s note: For readers struggling to remember the history, the Soviets were in charge 1917-1991.] I studied civil engineering in college but I really wanted to be a dramatic actor like my father. He discouraged me from acting because it’s a hard life especially hard in the Soviet Union. Instead I went to the same college as my older brother. We went there in part to avoid 2 years military duty by going to a college with a military education program. By the way, my brother then became a rock star (in Russia).

So your dad, the actor, made you study civil engineering but your brother got to be a rock star?
Yes, it seems a bit unfair. In addition to their limelight careers, my uncle was an opera singer.
(continued below)

Was your mother by any chance a ballerina?
No. A chemical engineer.

Ha! That’s amazing! Okay, so you studied civil engineering, learned to love it once you got involved in the construction side of things and worked on commercial buildings. Then you moved to the U.S., and…
And many of the other Russian immigrants at the time were changing career paths, looking for faster ways to start their lives in the United States, such as computers. But I wanted to stick with construction. It took a little longer to get my career going here but I’m happy and proud with my choice.

What are some of the tasks you might undertake in an average day?
Yell at people, review bids for approval, estimate costs, review drawings, yell at people, oversee construction progress. I go to the sites as well.

What is your relationship like with the subs? Do you direct their work or does Kiska?
I primarily deal with the Construction Manager but if the CM is having trouble resolving something then I step in to act as a mediator. The subs’ contract is with Kiska so while I can give direction, it really should come from Kiska. The subs will usually listen to me since I represent the owner but I’d rather it come from Kiska.

What can you do if a subcontractor is slow or doing a bad job besides yelling at them?
If they are really bad, then we’ll replace them. We had to replace a sub on the Knickerbocker project already. It was very clear he wasn’t doing his work the shop drawings weren’t being delivered and the ones we eventually received were just copies of the MEP engineer’s drawings with a new title block. We sat down with him and tried to find another way but we couldn’t. Otherwise, you can sometimes punish subs with fines or generally make their lives a little more difficult by being prickly. I try to avoid a situation in which I start babysitting the sub to make sure they get their work done that’s not how things should work. The bottom line is that we can kick them off the job and never hire them again.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
I enjoy the working environment the most. I can’t say it feels like family because it’s better I get yelled at by my family! Just kidding. Overall, though this is a nice place with nice people. I’m learning a lot. It was a 180-degree change from where I was on the other side of the fence. There’s a lot of support here. Otherwise it’s a really boring tedious job. (Laughing.)

We see you in the office and at the construction site, often on the same day. How much time do you spend at your desk versus in the field? (Or are you always in two places at once?!)
Even when I’m at my desk, my mind is outside. 60% outside, 40% inside.

What other projects are you working on at Hudson?
Knickerbocker (Bushwick), Emerson (Clinton Hill ), and helping on some new projects we’re planning like one in East New York. I just started looking at the drawings for that project.

How would you compare Third + Bond to other Hudson projects or projects from past jobs?
This is my second residential project in the U.S. Most of my other experience here was commercial. With Plaza I did a much bigger residential project a 38-story residential tower in Chelsea. The challenges on Third + Bond are different. Especially the excavation has been tricky. It’s a little smaller than what I’ve done but the size of the project doesn’t really matter because every project has unique challenges with their own learning curve.

Are there any differences in working with union versus non-union contractors?
The Plaza job was union. Typically the workers speak better English. (In the Soviet Union, pretty much all of the laborers spoke Russian so that was very different from my experiences in the U.S. In today’s Russia there are a lot of workers from China and Turkey who don’t speak Russian probably they all speak English at the site.) From the management point of view, union contractors are better at doing paperwork for the bank and for approvals. The documentation flow is much smoother. As far as quality differences, it really depends on the individual contractor. The foundation guy for Third + Bond—I couldn’t say anything bad about him. I dealt with a union guy who was much faster but that guy was exceptional. I think the non-union foundation work is good.

What are the toughest challenges at Third + Bond right now?
To get out of the ground. We had to remove an empty oil tank on one side of the site and we’re taking out much of the fill that was near the tank to make sure no contamination is left behind. Meanwhile I’m hoping for good weather. Our foundation work happened to fall during winter season. Some of the reasons: stop work orders in the summer and time lost during pile driving waiting for a supply of piles at the correct length. Our subcontractor elected to pour grade beams separate from foundation slabs instead of monolithically as in the drawings. It’s easier for him this way but slower. The winter is a huge factor last week we lost 3 out of 5 days due to snow.

When will we see the walls go up for Third + Bond? What do you foresee as tough challenges?
I was promised that Signature would be on site this week but as of this interview, they still didn’t have a crane permit. Usually a crane permit takes a week to 2 weeks… but Signature didn’t get around to filing it until recently even though they started fabricating the panels long ago. Signature uses pre-fabricated structural members. They just bring and install them. It should only take a week per floor—that’s pretty fast. So the superstructure should be done within about five weeks from when they start which is any day now. It’s not a complicated project in terms of the mechanical, electrical or plumbing. So those trades should be able to jump in with the super structure.

What do you expect to see happen in construction over the next year or two?
It’s very difficult times across the industry. Doesn’t matter if you’re a CM, GC, union or non-union. I have a lot of friends who have lost jobs or are in a precarious position. I don’t think the luxury sector will flourish at all in the next year. I really don’t know but I’m not feeling overly optimistic. Driving down River Road on the other side of the Hudson, I’ve seen shuttered construction sites. Not long ago those sites were growing like mushrooms all over the place. Now there are foundations just sitting there. It doesn’t look good because they finished the highest value spots along the riverfront first so the shuttered sites are closest to the road. I’m not an economist but I know one rule, everything is moving like a sinus curve. There is a crest for every dip.

What is your dream project?
I don’t know what my dream project is but it would be very, very exciting to work on one of the computer-generated, modern design projects like the Gehry building on the West Side Highway (the one with a cloud-like curtain wall) or the DaVinci Tower in Dubai (the one with the 68 rotating floors). Until then, I’m happy to be working on Third + Bond.

Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-74 [Brownstoner]

From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”