A Chat with Ben Lord, Construction Executive at Clark Construction

Developing relationships, improving lives and embracing technology

By Chris Maday Schmidt

Ben Lord, Construction Executive at Clark Construction, has more than 16 years of industry experience, a bachelor’s of science degree in civil engineering and a graduate of the Clark-Darden MBA Certificate program. Lord joined Clark in 2001 as an engineer on the renovation and expansion of the American Red Cross headquarters’ project in Washington, D.C. After spending two years on the management side of construction, he transitioned to field management. Join Construction Superintendent as Lord talks about his journey through the industry and the importance of building listening and management skills, what tech tool he can’t live without on the jobsite and more.

(Q) Can you speak about your journey going from engineering to the field? What do you think helped with your transition to the field? What would you tell your younger self just starting out in the industry?

My civil engineering degree has helped me in the field in a couple of ways. It helps me recognize when there are potential structural issues or if something isn’t quite right due to a conflict in the drawings. For instance, I recently had a mechanical design showing several large pipes running side by side horizontally through an existing concrete wall in an area that wasn’t shown on the structural drawings. This could have been a big issue if we went ahead and cut an opening wide enough for all the pipes to run through. I raised the question to the structural engineer and they helped us find a solution to spread the pipes out and maintain concrete and rebar as needed within the wall. My engineering background also helps me when we run across issues in the field to be able to propose several potential solutions to the problem that allows the architects and engineers to respond quickly to questions, which then keeps the project moving forward on schedule.

I worked full time for two summers as a field surveyor for a civil engineering firm in college that really helped me understand the importance of accurate control lines and benchmarks, and how trades use this information to perform their work correctly. This experience really helped my transition into construction management as it gave me a basic knowledge of how layout is performed and how a project is built correctly.

If I could tell my younger self something, I’d probably tell myself to focus more on developing relationships and learning how to work successfully with different types of people and personalities. I was always focused on technical learning but could have started earlier on building my listening and management skills.

(Q) During the course of your 16-year career in the construction industry, you’ve spent the last eight years focused on healthcare construction. What do you like most about this type of construction?

I love that healthcare work has a great purpose and an immediate positive impact on the community. It drives me and our construction team to know that the final product will help save or improve lives. It also provides great motivation for the workforce to keep the project clean, to provide a high-quality product and to meet our commitments to one another.

(Q) You served as superintendent on one of the military’s flagship healthcare facilities, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Can you speak to some of the challenges on that project?

The biggest challenge was minimizing our impact on an active campus and maintaining their important medical operations for our soldiers and veterans, while replacing infrastructure, abating asbestos and tying into existing buildings. We developed a rigorous outage process with NAVFAC to plan timing and details well before the work to keep construction activities on schedule while maintaining operations. We also had to continually communicate with the workforce to coordinate logistics pathways, system shutoff locations, work hours and even where workers were allowed to eat for each construction area. Our mantra for every action was to “Do No Harm” both to our own workers and also to the patients and staff at the hospital. The biggest challenge was the 12 months leading up to the BRAC deadline. At one point, there were 16 different departments being renovated at once with a team of five field managers. We had work going on at all hours of the day, 7 days a week and we had to really work well as a team to keep everything running smoothly.

(Q) Obviously every owner is different, but do you have a particular approach to creating and maintaining a positive, productive relationship?

I’ve found that the biggest key to creating a positive, trusting relationship is to really listen to what people want and then show them through your actions that you hear their concerns no matter how trivial [the concerns] may seem to you. Something as minor as putting up a sign in a specific location can be a really big deal because they have promised that to someone else, possibly a major project stakeholder or donor. Stay humble and listen to people and you will hear what’s important, then you can build trust with them and maintain a great working relationship.

(Q) Share the type of work you do as chair of Clark’s Superintendent Steering Committee and how you bring attention on improvements to field supervision practices.

As chair of Clark’s Superintendent’s Steering Committee, it’s my job to coordinate improvements in the way our field leaders manage our projects across the nation. The team of 20 field leaders who make up the committee have different levels of experience; specialize in different types of construction, such as healthcare, civil, foundations, concrete, residential, government and retail; and represent different regions of the country. We look for ideas and ways to improve field supervision practices and policies to enable our field supervisors to achieve world-class levels of safety, quality and client focus. For instance, we worked with our safety department to evaluate and test different types of hardhats – specifically new helmet-style hardhats with chin straps – to find the best product for Clark and our people. We helped roll out the new helmet to every Clark employee this past April – the first general contractor in the United States to adopt the helmet-style hardhat as our company standard. We also have worked together with our Risk Management and IT teams to develop and implement a new product for monitoring water on our projects to reduce the number and severity of leaks and water losses on projects across the country.

(Q) Which project, to date, would you say was your most difficult and why? How did you overcome those difficulties?

Every project certainly has its challenges, but the structure at the Shakespeare Theatre -Harman Center for the Arts (Washington, D.C.) had some very unique challenges. The theater is structurally isolated from everything around it for acoustics, which created some constructability challenges. The isolation pads (steel plates cast into rubber) had to be fully supported during the concrete pour, but then 3-inch gaps between the theater and supporting structure had to be stripped afterward. Clark Concrete came up with using sand as a framing support, which then had to be subsequently blown out to clean out the gaps. There were also bridge construction-sized post-tensioning ducts running all over the place that required stage stressing after pours were completed above. We had to leave out sections of concrete and had a strict sequence on stressing cables and stripping beams and slabs. The theater structure had to be stripped from the sixth floor down, which created schedule challenges with the follow-on work. The biggest reason for our success was an open line of communication among the project team members (subcontractors, Clark team, engineers, consultants, owner, inspectors and architect) that fostered innovative ideas and quick solutions when we ran into daily challenges.

(Q) The construction worker shortage is an ongoing hot topic in the industry: what have you seen and what is your take on how we should fill the gap of the skilled worker shortages?

I haven’t noticed a big shortage of construction workers but I have noticed a general decrease in the quality of skilled labor the past 10 years. This requires our project teams to work harder to plan for and monitor the quality of the work. We utilize the three-phase United States Army Corps of Engineers Quality Control Plan on all of our projects to ensure the work is prepared for and installed properly.

There is a lot of opportunity in the construction field. As an industry, we need to communicate the potential career opportunities to attract more people, and support apprenticeship and training programs for skilled trades.

(Q) Are there any trends that you are seeing in the field more often? Is it impacting the way you do your job?

I have noticed that subcontractors are embracing technology more than even just a couple of years ago. We are now scheduling deliveries with our subcontractors using an app and tracking drywall patches on a shared Google sheet. This has made my team more efficient with daily coordination with the jobsites’ lead foremen.

(Q) What tech tool can’t you live without on the jobsite?

Our Clark project team uses a group-texting app to keep everyone in the loop quickly on what’s going on around the jobsite. We use it many times a day for everything from coordinating deliveries, to safety concerns to free food in someone’s office.

(Q) How do you emphasize the importance of safety to your crew before and during a project?

The best way I have found to create a culture of safety on the jobsite is to talk about it, constantly, and in many different forums. Talk to your workforce during orientations and pre-work meetings about how we are one big family on the jobsite, and how everyone needs to look out for one another, regardless of which company they work for. Talk in your foreman’s meeting about reporting near misses; discuss those incidents to learn from them before an unsafe act occurs. Talk in your monthly stand downs about the importance of constant vigilance, not taking risks and stopping work if something doesn’t seem right. Make sure your subcontractors are holding effective pre-work meetings by attending them and adding your own comments about what risks they have in their operation. Talk to workers when you walk the site about the issues they have seen or dealt with that day. If your workforce feels like safety is important to everyone on the jobsite, and that we care about them, they will work smarter and safer.

The bottom line is, there is no magic formula for maintaining a safe jobsite. Being a safety leader means recognizing inexperience or indifference before they lead to an injury. It means inspiring workers to take their safety, and that of their co-workers, into their own hands.

(Q) How do you balance your work and personal life?

With five children under eight years old at home, and another on the way, this is probably one of my greatest challenges of all! I really have to prioritize what critical work needs to be addressed each day and make sure I generally stay on task despite the distractions of daily issues. I work hard to make sure my team knows what is expected of them and give them freedom to get results without being micro-managed. I always try to make time to walk the site every day to review the safety approach, project schedule and productivity with the team. If I don’t get everything done during normal work hours, I go home and spend time with my family and then spend some time working after they go to bed. Our web-based P6 platform makes it easy to do schedule updates and monthly narratives from anywhere.