Does a developer need a construction background, or can that expertise be hired in?

Question

Most developers doing value-add or ground-up work came from one of two places: they built things for a living and moved up into ownership, or they came from finance and hired a construction manager. Both paths produce successful developers, and each camp tends to think the other route is harder. The case for coming from the field: field experience means knowing when a subcontractor's number is fake, understanding what a two week weather delay actually does to a schedule, and being able to walk a slab and spot a problem before it gets buried. The case for hiring construction expertise: a developer's core job is land, entitlements, and capital, and paying an owner's rep something like 1 to 2 percent of hard costs buys that expertise without a decade of scars. Plenty of people who know construction cold have still lost money by misreading a rent comp. Someone comfortable with renovation work but new to ground-up development is often most nervous about not having a gut feel for a schedule. That gap is exactly what an owner's rep or experienced construction manager is meant to close, and it is a reasonable reason to hire the expertise rather than assume it has to be learned from scratch.

joe_delgado5 · Answer

I'd say hire it, but hire it before you buy the dirt, not after. My margins are thin enough that I learned this the annoying way on a small gut job. The people who can save you are the ones who look at the site while you can still walk away. An owner's rep reading your GC contract after you've already closed on land and signed a purchase price is doing damage control.

Also quarry, no gut feel for a schedule is fixable in one project if you sit through every weekly OAC meeting and write down what slipped and why. It's the not knowing you don't know that kills people.

Does a developer need a construction background, or can that expertise be hired in?

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