Doing It For The Team: Group PMX’s Michael Giaramita At Bisnow’s New York Construction And Development Event On Feb. 15

Group PMX’s mission is to help construction teams work more effectively on big projects. But when CEO and Managing Principal Michael Giaramita speaks at Bisnow’s New York Construction and Development Conference on Feb. 15, his focus will be on more than spreadsheets, budgets and schedules.

To Giaramita, the success of a project comes down to one important — and potentially volatile — element.

“It’s all about the people,” said Giaramita, who developed Group PMX’s CM Neutral strategy that optimizes project delivery by diffusing conflict among project team members and producing the best value for the owner.

With 40-plus years experience as a construction leader, Giaramita knows firsthand what it takes to make a project successful. He has been involved in all aspects of project, program and construction management, and his résumé includes work for both public and private sector clients in the office, transportation, healthcare, higher education, transit, industrial and other sectors.

He earned his Bachelor of Science in construction management from Colorado State University and serves on the Board of Governors for the New York Building Foundation, the charitable arm of the New York Building Congress. When not bringing complex projects back on track, his interests include sailing. 

Giaramita will share the stage at the Feb. 15 event with other New York construction leaders, including some of Group PMX’s clients. Information about registration is available here.

Bisnow spoke with him recently to get his thoughts on the city’s CRE market and how his firm’s approach can help participants overcome some of their current challenges.

Bisnow: How would you describe the current state of construction and development in New York City?

Giaramita: Talent recruitment and acquisition are the biggest challenges — the job market in our industry has been extremely competitive. But we’ve been stepping up to find new and creative ways to identify and engage qualified candidates. Those efforts have paid off: Last year, we grew our team by 19%. 

I think another issue is that the city is budget-challenged as it moves forward with some big infrastructure projects. So we're seeing a little slowdown in projects in the letting and moving-ahead stages.

However, momentum is building on the Gateway Tunnel project from New Jersey to New York. That's a multibillion-dollar project and part of the even more massive Gateway Program. We're staffing up to be ready for these infrastructure projects, although they're not really starting as soon as we had hoped. 

Bisnow: In light of these challenges, what advice would you give to your peers?

Giaramita: Group PMX’s philosophy is to align project teams around one common goal: project delivery. We call this ‘One team. Shared success.’ We emphasize the importance of collaboration among all project team members, focusing everyone on the project’s best interests and promoting open, clear and constant communication to remove obstacles to progress. 

Typically, when something goes wrong on a project, everybody says, ‘Oh, that's not my fault. That's somebody else’s fault.’ Our philosophy is to hold people accountable and to ask, ‘OK, what's the problem? We’ve got to solve it because we need to keep the project going forward.’ 

On a weekly or even daily basis, we look at what's happening on a project that's causing or may cause obstacles to moving forward. We get everybody in the same room to solve the issue collectively. 

That approach has worked very well. The key is getting everybody working together instead of getting hung up on ‘that's not my responsibility.’ 

It’s also a matter of managing the schedule and project resources. If you don't have the right resources in the field, things won’t get done. We can link everything electronically to make sure we have the design, materials, permits and all the other things that you need in place to move the work ahead.

Bisnow: What is ahead for Group PMX in 2023?

Giaramita: We're very involved in aviation right now. We’ve worked closely with the Delta team at LaGuardia for several years. And we just finished working with Holt Construction on Terminal 8 at JFK.

I think that our involvement with aviation will continue for the next five to six years. Historic investments are being made to transform the region’s airports, with the JFK Vision plan alone accounting for about $18B.

We're also working on a lot of transit projects, and I see us increasing our activity on infrastructure projects over the next several years. Life sciences and healthcare are also exploding right now, and we will be leveraging our expertise in those areas to serve current and new clients in those sectors. 

Bisnow: What are you passionate about?

Giaramita: I'm actually writing a book on what we do and how our philosophies promote better collaboration in our industry, which has been fraught with infighting. If you have a soccer match, you have two teams on the field and everybody wants one of those teams to win, right? But in construction, we have like 50 teams on the field and that's a problem. We have to figure out how to make that work better and to collaborate more, that way everybody wins — especially the client. 

What I am passionate about is fixing that team dynamic, which is why I'm working on this book to get people to look at the value of working together better.

Bisnow: Does your book have a title yet?

Giaramita: I want to call it It's All About The People because it comes down to getting a super diverse group of people to meet in the middle and work together. 

That's how Group PMX does it. We're not going into projects and starting over. We take the same people and just change the project culture so that they work together instead of fighting.

That's one of my passions: to really get our philosophies out there and educate people on the benefits of doing things differently.

For more about the Feb. 15 event, visit here.

This article was produced in collaboration between Group PMX and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.