A recent report I came across revealed some stunning data about construction delays. According to the 2020 National Construction Payment Report (https://www.levelset.com/blog/2020-reportconstruction- wasted-time-slow-payment), “80% of construction businesses expect delays on some or all of their projects.” That is four out of five construction projects across the board that will have a delay and lose time! While it is no secret that delays are an unfortunate and often frequent problem in construction, numbers this high tells me that some conversations should be occurring on nearly all construction projects across the board that may not be happening.

Developers - Are you receiving notice letters and having open conversations about delays with your construction team? No one likes sending or receiving letters, but contracts often require them, and they don’t need to be contentious. The Douglas Company, one of our 68 documented process systems, requires that we send letters for all delay events,...

There was a recent article in Senior Housing News that discussed the rising development costs in senior housing being to the tune of a 6.4% increase last year according to a report created by CBRE.  During the same period, which was 2019, the average number of units per project decreased to 106 from 128. 

As you can imagine, two primary drivers of this were a robust construction market and the increasing labor expenses.  This isn’t necessarily new as the article also confirmed that overall U.S. construction activity has mostly increased over the last ten years, which thanks to the laws of supply and demand drive up material costs regularly. 

It was interesting to note that site acquisition expenses represented 10.1% of development costs and that the average site area decreased 15% as demand for good sites increased significantly in metropolitan areas. 

So this trend is not just about senior housing exclusively as the...