In conversation with Jim McInerney, VP of Construction Operations.
Ask any client what they want most from a construction partner, and the answer is almost always the same: certainty. Certainty on schedule and certainty on budget. On a project the size and complexity of ORDNext at O’Hare International Airport, that certainty isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the single most important factor in the entire undertaking.
It’s also the first commitment the AECOM Hunt Clayco BOWA joint venture makes to any client, and one the team starts building before a single shovel hits the ground.
How Pre-Construction Planning Builds Schedule Certainty
Schedule and budget certainty don’t begin on day one of construction. It begins in pre-con, and carries through every phase of the project until completion. That means daily attention, working alongside trade prime contractors and our full staff to make sure the team is tracking against the plan we set.
We take that commitment seriously enough to have two full-time schedulers on ORDNext, whose sole responsibility is ensuring the entire team stays on pace. That’s not a luxury on a project of this size at O’Hare; it’s a necessity.
ORDNext Delivers Under Budget on the GMP with the City of Chicago
A few months ago, the team hit a milestone that speaks directly to what this kind of discipline can produce: coming in under budget and under contract on the GMP, after a process that spanned many months in close collaboration with the City of Chicago.
Getting under budget on a project of this magnitude doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of tremendous, sustained effort from this entire team, and it’s a success story for the City of Chicago as much as it is for the joint venture.
Budget and schedule are inseparable. You can’t hit one without hitting the other. That’s why everyone on this team, at every level, operates with a schedule -first mindset.
Daily Scheduling and Coordination on the ORDNext Job Site
We have roughly 100 staff on site, along with 300 to 400 tradespeople on any given day. Every one of those people is talking about the schedule every day. We break the work down to the micro level, where small crews meet each morning to lay out exactly what they intend to accomplish that day: a run of pipe, a piece of mechanical work, whatever the task calls for.
The real strength of how this joint venture operates comes down to planning. We look 22 days ahead of every activity on this project. That means our quality and safety teams are already reviewing a task three weeks before it happens, so that by the time a crew shows up to do the work, there’s a fully developed plan in place for exactly what that day looks like.
That’s what allows us to hold the line on schedule and budget as a unified team, not just individual crews doing their part.
Why Schedule and Budget Certainty Matter on Every Project
What makes this approach work is that it connects two very different scales of the same commitment. At the top, it’s the promise we make to a client before construction even begins. At the ground level, it’s a tradesman looking at a single task for a single day, backed by weeks of coordination between quality, safety, and scheduling teams.
Countless meetings, conversations, and adjustments happen in between those two points, every single day. But that’s the work. And at the end of the day, schedule and budget certainty are what every client is counting on us to deliver, on ORDNext and on every project we take on.
That certainty isn’t something we talk about. It’s something we build into how this team operates, every day, at every level.