Process verses Content

A real estate development project, at least one that involves a construction project, is marked by two separate but related threads or silos of work that I refer to as process and content. An example I discussed with managers at Pray Construction (when I was still at Pray) was the residential experience of say installing a new door in a house. You…as a friend of the homeowner that just had a new door installed in their house…come in and remark “What a great door!” Your homeowner friend rolls his eyes and accepts the compliment and tries to take you onto another topic. You resist and drill in. "Why are you rolling your eyes?”….and then you listen about how long the installation took, how much is cost, what a mess was made every day…..fill in the blanks…you have heard it. I call this process and for your homeowner friend, it is all but impossible to unlink the process involved with the door installation from the content…what the door looks like and how it works.

Above are two employees of Pray Construction Company…J.C. Starcher and Dave Osborne. Both of these men add a lot of positive “stuff” to the process which is now demolition, referred to in the industry as selective demolition. (They are removing lath and plaster from walls and ceilings, in addition to gypsum board, concrete overlay on some floors, and quite a bit of other, non relevant…from a historical perspective…building products). They are highly productive workers and add a lot to the process. I think Dave Osborne has worked for Pray Construction over 20 years. Dave and I have been involved in a lot of projects over the years and the project is benefiting in a big way from his involvement. J.C. has the type of work ethic that used to be a lot easier to find and now is getting increasingly rare as our kids learn how to make web pages instead of fixing the fence. Anyway, J.C. like David will leave his mark on the process. As far as the content goes, Pray Construction is performing the demolition work on a time and material basis, so the client is about to feel the benefit from their hard work reflected in lower costs I think…all while not hurting anyone.

Good deal.

By the way…J.C. has another career as a model..checkout http://www.rockinleather.com/ and see if you can find him.

Welcome to 209 Capitol BLOG!!

Somehow you found your way to this BLOG which is intended, at this point, as a test. My hope is to provide some illumination for interested parties about the process of developing 209-213 Capitol Street, a historical building located in Charleston West Virginia. The name of my company is PrayWorks. On the 209 Capitol project,I am what is known in the development world as a “fee based developer”, which means that I am paid a fee to manage the development process and do not have any of my own $$ in the deal as an equity participant. The last project I developed is at Snowshoe Mountain resort and is known as Soaring Eagle Lodge. On that project, PrayWorks was the fee based developer and also an equity investor.

So…what does that mean…what are the key deliverables? Well….more of that to follow in days/months ahead…..but basically working with my clients I created a financial template for the life of the building asset and then went to work helping to make the cells on that template or proforma come to life. Items such as hard construction costs, interest rates, income from a lease and so forth all came into my view shed.

I’ll be taking a look at all of these areas in more detail and you will hopefully be able to follow along. Time will tell of course. I’ve never published a BLOG before, so I’m not sure if I have the time available to keep it current.