News + Ideas

Commercial Observer: Top Young Professionals 2022

Sourced from Commercial Observer

December 6, 2022

Managing the relocation of companies and the build-out of their new offices was no easy task over the past year because of the pandemic. And Kelsey Simmons of construction consultancy MGAC knows all about it.

“Ah, challenges,” Simmons said. “There’ve been so many.”

Items that she could buy off the store shelf pre-COVID were now taking weeks to arrive — to the chagrin of her clients. Take, for example, the project for the mortgage company Freddie Mac, which was relocating to a 153,000-square-foot office and had hired MGAC in 2020 to manage the office’s full build-out. When construction was slated to begin, Simmons’ contractor couldn’t find metal studs, a basic necessity in the construction field. The solution to procuring studs was a road trip across the country to North Carolina.

Besides the supply chain constraints, leading a construction project during the work-from-home era is never ideal. Before COVID-19, Simmons would hold weekly meetings on site with the client, contractors, and architects to assess the state of the project and work through any problems. But those meetings were pushed to calls since most architects and clients were working remotely, complicating decision-making.

“We could solve 10 problems [by being] on a site all looking at the problem,” Simmons said. “But now we were having to deal with someone holding up their phone trying to FaceTime.”

Despite all the roadblocks, the mortgage company project was completed in May — on schedule and under budget, Simmons says. “We’re problem solvers at the end of the day. [COVID] was a new problem that we’ve had to deal with.”

Now Simmons has moved on to her biggest project yet: overseeing the build-out of a tech client’s global sales, marketing, and operations office in Arlington, Virginia, a project spanning 190,000 square feet.

Still, the most significant highlight this year for Simmons was something much more personal: her engagement.

Click here for the original article.

Contact Us

Want to learn more about how we can help bring your project to life, or get in touch with one of our many experts? Send us an email with how we can help, and we will be in touch.

Contact Us