It's no wonder that Peter Marchetto, who heads operations in the Americas for construction giant Bovis Lend Lease, knows how to incorporate architects in the building process. He grew up with one.
Marchetto's older brother, Dean, is principal of his own firm in Hoboken, N.J., and both Marchettos learned about construction from their father, a contractor. His lessons on teamwork obviously sank in, because his CEO son preaches collaboration both inside and outside of Bovis. Before each big project, Marchetto will bring in all the key players to talk. While the meetings last for up to two days, he considers it time well spent.
“Everybody talks about what we need to do to make the project successful,” Marchetto says. “We don't go eight months and find out that the owner was interested in one thing, and the design team was going in another direction.”
Ranked the nation's No. 2 construction company on Building Design + Construction's annual “Giants 300” list, Bovis had 2005 revenue of more than $3.6 billion. Yet despite its huge size, the company prides itself on a personal, collaborative way of doing business.
“There's a lot of two-way communication between the designer and the development team, and they have a great preconstruction program where they work with the architect up front,” says Dean Marchetto, who has worked with his younger sibling on two projects in New Jersey.
Having your older brother as an advocate is one thing. Having Donald Trump funnel business in your direction is another. After winning a contest held by the New York real estate developer in the 1990s, Bovis built eight buildings for Trump at Riverside South in Manhattan and later constructed Trump World Tower; it has also done work in Chicago for the star of The Apprentice.
Eighty-five percent of Bovis' work comes from repeat customers. “We don't want to build one job for Donald Trump or any developer we work with,” Marchetto says. “We want to build a relationship so that the owner thinks of Bovis as they're building for the future.”
