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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 time between inception and build by approximately 40%.

EDWIN WARFIELD: How does PROTECS differ from other design-build firms?

CHRIS DIPAOLO: I think the difference in our delivery methodology than most others is twofold. One is we are a collaborative design-build firm. Consciously, when starting PROTECS, I said, “We don’t need to have in-house engineering. We’re engineers ourselves.” All of our PMs are engineers, our project engineers are engineers, our principals are even licensed engineers as well—even some of our superintendents. So we have knowledge to do the upfront planning and programming and master planning and strategic planning with clients, but then we want to work with the best in class firms that have the most expertise and in-depth knowledge of exactly what we’re doing that can bring 20 to 30 years' experience to the table. So now you have this group of architects, engineers, design-builders, even commissioning and qualification experts where you get 100 to 200 years of experience around the table at the most formative stage of a project that has the most influence to impact time, cost, compliance overall on a project performance and performance of the facility overall. And you’re doing that on a competitive basis. You’re going out to that market. You’re bidding those experts, getting the best pricing, so you’re paying no more for it, but you’re getting a much more leveraged model. And then with our Target Cost patent that we have, where we’re driving the design parameters to meet the performance/conformance compliance parameters as well as the cost parameters and guaranteeing all that, it’s a huge advantage to clients to have that understanding and that comfort that there’s a firm that is going to stand behind not only to meet my performance and qualification requirements—which anybody can do if you spend any amount of money—but the key is: How do you spend the least amount of money and still comply?

Q. You mentioned that PROTECS has offices in New Jersey and Utah. What regions of the U.S. do you serve?

A. Our ability to work throughout the United States is uninhibited. We worked in over 33 states since I started in this industry for sure and a lot of people in my company have worked in multiple states as well. We are presently working right now, for example, in about eight states—anywhere from North Carolina to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania for sure, California. We’re in Ohio and in Salt Lake City being in Utah as well. Our ability to do projects throughout the United States is not an issue for us and we really believe the Salt Lake City office gives us that Intermountain West Coast presence that is needed out there and we’re seeing that we’re a huge leg up on our competitors in that region based on how we’re focused and set up and the delivery methodology that we have.

Q. Tell us about your work for universities. How did you get involved in the world of higher ed?

A. It was a strategic decision for the company in order to enhance our real estate capabilities and then grow that side of our business. We acquired a company called Novita Equities, which was founded Mr. William Hunter, who came from a 15–20-year career in the high tech real estate world working for big REITs such as Biomed Realty Trust, Wexford. He saw one of the biggest platforms that we have in that company is that we will go and work with second-tier universities that are looking to establish a STEAM or a STEM program in their university and grow that. And in order to do so you need some sophisticated facilities to track the students and the professors to do so—whether it’s a science building or innovation center that they can do some post-grad research as well. We will go into these universities and offer to fund the entire project, design and build it, own it, operate it, maintain it, and lease it back to that university, so they don’t have to do the capital fundraising and take years to just get the funds in place in order to start a project. They can get it jump-started much quicker through our model. We saw that that’s a real advantage to these universities—as long as they have decent credit, it’s a very effective way to do projects for them and do it in a quick manner. They’ve already done it through the food services, they’ve already done it through the student housing where they’ve outsourced these programs. So we’re looking at being this third leg of the stool saying, “you can outsource your high-tech buildings” which they really don’t have a lot of experience managing, operating, and maintaining anyway—and we do. That is a paradigm shift for us to now becoming or try to become a major developer into that marketplace.

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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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