Building and Managing Complex Teams over Zoom
Virtual Session #1
Bernie Craig, Wexford Science & Technology
Claire Drummond, Wexford Science & Technology
Building teams in a post-pandemic world is difficult. Bringing together people over virtual platforms, where people can disengage or be distracted quickly, can lead to lack of cohesion, good communication, and ultimately jeopardize the team and the project. In the world of construction and development, where a majority of the team is out in the field and the team leads can be remote, hybrid, or in-person, building a strong team foundation is paramount to the project’s success.
In this virtual session, we will dig into effective hybrid inter-team communication, tools for tough conversations, team building, and ensuring trust and transparency. The speakers come from a lens of building a 1.1mm sq. ft. office, lab, and residential development with the first two years of the project happening entirely remotely. They will address the lessons learned from cultivating a diverse and immense group of talented people to quickly build and keep confidence, engaging in difficult conversations over the phone, and safeguarding the project’s budget and delivery schedule.
About Bernie
Bernie Craig functions as the central point of contact concerning all construction, budget and scheduling issues for projects in Winston-Salem, NC, Durham, NC, Chicago, IL, Norfolk, VA, Phoenix AZ and Sacramento CA, He brings over thirty-five years of experience in the construction industry, ranging from general superintendent to senior executive of operations for a New York City construction firm.
He is currently responsible for the Aggie Square project in Sacramento, CA, which is a 9 acre site with multiple buildings and a 1,500 parking structure. The project consists of almost 600,000 sq. ft. of lab and office space along with a residential component of 190 units and a specialized stand alone building of 29,000 sq. ft. They are all schedule for completion by end of 2024, on schedule and under budget.
His previous project in Phoenix, AZ was a 240,000 sq. ft. lab building that was completed in 2020. He takes projects from the concept design and budgeting to assisting in the selection of the overall architecture and engineering, construction management and consultants. Including the current Aggie Square project, he has over 5 million square feet of core and shell tenant improvements buildouts in his career. His experience covers core and shell historical renovations to new construction out of the ground. He has work on major lab faculties to biosafety level space, office/conference centers and infrastructure projects along with restaurants and large landscaping projects.
About Claire
Claire Drummond serves as the Senior Director and Market Executive for Wexford’s first development in California - Aggie Square. She is responsible for overseeing the design, construction, leasing, operations and deal management. Aggie Square is a 1 million sq. ft. development on UC Davis’ Sacramento campus. With two 7-story lab buildings, one academic office tower, a mixed-use residential component and parking, the project is estimated to bring over $1.1 billion of development to the Sacramento market. This development will also showcase Connect Labs by Wexford, Wexford’s marquee shared lab and office offering.
Prior to joining the Wexford team, Drummond was a Senior Program Manager at Arizona State University, leading the place-based innovation efforts for the Entrepreneurship + Innovation team. This included the oversight of design & construction of new spaces for the program; programmatic and operational design and daily oversight of the existing portfolio sites; leading a team of six; and launching a premier, community-facing makerspace. Before her time at ASU, Drummond worked at CIC (the Cambridge Innovation Center), curating a diverse portfolio of clients for the CIC Boston location. She helped to design and implement data analytics for the company-wide sales goals and eventually lead the expansion into Providence, Rhode Island.
