“Right. Thanks.” He pushed open her office door and stepped out into the busy office.
Interns, assistants, business analysts, and junior project managers worked in the maze of cubicles in the center of the floor. The offices of the senior project managers lined the walls all around the floor. Right off the bank of elevators were two glass-walled conference rooms that could have the center dividing wall removed to become one very large conference room. Projection screens and smart boards covered the rear wall.
Brad and his father both had corner offices with internal offices for their assistants. The elevators took up another corner, and the restroom area the last.
Cutting through the sea of cubicles, Brad walked from his corner office to the back door of the conference room. “Bro,” he heard. Looking up, he spotted Jon coming from another direction. “Morning.”
“Hey. Glad you got my note.”
“Nashville, huh? Why do I feel like you’re always trying to get rid of me?”
“Not this time. This one goes to a different team. We just haven’t assigned it yet. Don’t worry. You’re stuck here for a little bit at least.”
Jon snorted. “Right. Maybe I should start doing residential houses like Ken. Then I could just keep building Atlanta. I hear it hasn’t sprawled out enough yet.”
“Working on something less than twenty million dollars? You’d be bored out of your mind in a week.” Brad opened the back door of the conference room and they entered to find the rest of the team present.
He walked straight to Owen and held out his hand. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” They shook hands and Brad took a seat in the center of the table. Owen would run this meeting. Along with him and Jon, Brad saw Ian Jones, the mechanical engineer, and Al Carpenter, the electrical engineer. The door opened and Valerie walked in, wearing a lilac-colored pantsuit with a lime green and lilac scarf around her neck. He noticed a very slight limp in her step, but only because he knew to look for it.
He said good morning to her, then turned to Ian. “How’s the restaurant opening going?”
Ian grinned. “Been lots of fun so far. Never seen my wife so stressed. I’ll be glad when the opening night is a smashing success so she can relax a little bit.”
Brad smiled. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. You gonna make it?”
“Definitely. I’ve had your wife’s cooking.”
Owen stood at the head of the table. “Okay, welcome to everyone. Obviously, if you’re here, you know we won the design-build for this mall. The process for competition for the contract started eighteen months ago, so it’s nice to finally start rolling up our sleeves and getting down to it. Remember. This entire area was flooded and under up to twenty feet of water not too long ago.”
He pressed a button on the table in front of him. The screen behind him lowered and the lights dimmed. To emphasize his point, Owen started his presentation with a few aerial shots of the flood on the overhead.
“What we’re looking at is an eight hundred thousand square feet shopping experience in a suburb of Nashville. This project is worth almost $400 million, so we’re also planning on adding personnel to our Nashville office, which right now is just staffed with a couple project managers and a secretary who works remotely part-time.”
The computer model of the mall appeared on the screen. “Everything we’ve done to this point is a shell of a preliminary concept designed to give us something from which to pull bids and give the owners an idea of what our conception of the project looks like. We’re going to use that as the base to truly design it. Senior Mr. Dixon handpicked this team, so I know what we’re looking at is the best team our company can put forward.”
Ian spoke up. “Is the environmental cleanup on the site complete yet?”
Owen nodded. “Right. For those of you coming in new, this mall is being built on the site of an old steel mill. The mill never recovered after the flood. It has been a massive cleanup for another company on another contract and has taken three years. Their projected completion date is in six months, which gives us time to finalize all of our plans and specifications and solicit bids from subcontractors.”
Valerie raised her hand slightly. “How much input is the owner going to have on the interior design?”
Owen tapped a thin folder in front of him. “They’ve given us some input and asked us to give them three different approaches. They’ll look those over and choose one of the three.” He slid the folder toward her. “I know you did some preliminary stuff a year ago. I also know they really liked what you came up with. I’d definitely stick with that as the base for all three.”
He pushed a button and the image on the screen changed to an overhead view of the site. “I want to talk about access now.”
Nearly two hours later, the meeting broke up. Brad sat at the table for another minute, making notes in his tablet while the thoughts were fresh in his mind. When he shut the cover, he looked up and saw Owen stacking notebooks. “Phenomenal job, Owen. You’ve clearly made this project your own.”
“Thank you, Brad. I will admit that I wanted it.” He laughed. “A lot. I have ideas on top of ideas, and these owners are so open to new and innovative.”
“I know that’s up your alley.” He shook his hand. “I have a thing. I’ll see you next meeting.”
“Sir.”
Brad slowly walked out of the conference room, going through the back door, which brought him out into a cubicle aisle. He tried to concentrate on the information handed out in the two-hour-long meeting, but he could only remember what Valerie had talked about, the questions she asked. He wondered now if he should have given her that promotion. Maybe he needed more distance from her in order to function properly.
