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5 minutes with... US-based Eric Ottinger ACABE is a Construction and Real Estate Advisor at EY
Q
What was your route into the profession? I studied finance at college, expecting to go into investment banking. However, I graduated in 2008 during the global financial crisis, when finance majors had a very tough time getting jobs. But while I was in college, I’d taken a real estate class that gave me the hours to apply for a real estate salesperson licence (obviously not an optimal time to start selling houses either). I then worked for a broker for close to a year until I
Q
How did you come to work for EY? Most of my career, I’ve worked as a project manager on real estate and construction projects. I was the construction manager (CM) for a few Mercedes dealership projects in San Francisco when a recruiter called in early 2018. He introduced me to EY’s Construction and Real Estate Advisory Services (CREAS) practice. When I started with EY, I changed to more of a consulting role for short-term sprints rather than being a CM from inception to close-out. Engagements included construction audits, risk and operation assessments, cost management assignments and other specialised focuses within major capital projects. The cool part was that it gave me broad experience working on a wide array of challenges faced in mega- and giga-projects around the world. Two years later, our CREAS group started focusing on longerterm engagements. I’m now back to my project management roots and am the CM on a US$12.5m mixed-use development in San Francisco.
meeting our design criteria. We’ve gone through several rounds of value engineering to achieve the investors’ budget target. We also face changing regulatory requirements, as this is a six- to seven-year project and the California Building Code is updated every three years. To mitigate this, we keep a constant eye on the schedule and regulations, work with the city staff to reach a common consensus and push to fast-track our preconstruction efforts to enable an effective permitting process.
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What question do you get asked most often? People are often unaware of all the management aspects behind major construction projects, so I might have to go into a bit of detail when asked what I do. As EY is typically known as a Big Four accounting firm, it often also requires some additional explanation that I’m not an accountant.
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found a part-time opportunity with a local developer/asset manager that eventually led to a full-time position.
FEBRUARY 2021
Have you always had an interest in construction/ engineering? I grew up in a small town in Virginia with a dad who is a very hands-on, do-it-yourself kind of guy. When I was four, Dad designed and built our first house basically by himself on nights and weekends. I remember sitting on the grade beams learning how to swing a hammer. My parents still live in that house today. Throughout my young adult life, I kept working with Dad and learning the basics of construction. When the dot-com bubble hit, Dad got fed-up seeing his retirement account shrink and decided to start buying fixer-upper properties for rental. Of course, he needed a workshop to store all his tools, so we ended up building one that is bigger than our house (Mom still makes comments on that today). In college, I worked for a small, local contractor, where we built houses, did home repairs and small commercial tenant improvements.
Q
Do you believe the industry will make full use of the technology that is available? I believe our industry will continue to trend in that direction. I’m a huge advocate for ConTech and
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What are the current challenges of your role? There are a lot of moving parts with this project. We are still in the planning and entitlement phase, and are experiencing challenges making sure the project pencils, while still
“I’m looking forward to seeing projects that have really embraced new technologies and created a special user experience.”
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