Pre-construction/ Owner's representation/ Geneva, IL
Someone should be looking at this project from your side of the table.
ICM is Michael Iwan. Thirty years of construction experience, brought in by owners, developers, contractors and investors to advocate for them on the decisions that determine how a project turns out: concept, design review, budgets, scopes, contracts and permitting. He stays on the job through construction to the certificate of final occupancy.
01 / Start to finish
Start to finish
Every project runs this arc. Mike is on it at all four points, so the person who reads the first set of drawings is the same one walking the building at final occupancy.
02 / The window
The window
The cheapest time to fix a project is while it is still on paper.
Most of what a building will cost is decided before anyone breaks ground, in the concept, the design, the scopes, the contracts and the approvals. Early on, changing those decisions costs a conversation and a redraw. After the contracts are signed and the crews are mobilized, the same change costs money that was never budgeted and time that cannot be recovered.
That window is where ICM starts. It is not where Mike stops. He stays with the project through construction to completion, because the person who wrote the scopes and read the contracts is the right person to watch them get built.
A long-standing tradeoff in construction, and a general pattern rather than a claim about any one project. The point is simple: the earlier an experienced set of eyes is on the decisions, the more room there is to do something about what they find.
03 / When people call
When people call
Rarely at the same point. Usually at one of these.
If more than one of these sounds like the project on your desk, it is worth a conversation before the next set of drawings goes out.
- You have a site, a concept and a number in your head, and you need to know whether the three of them fit together.
- The design is moving and nobody on your side is asking what it will cost to build or how it will be maintained.
- Drawings are about to go out to bid and you are not certain the scopes cover the whole job.
- The budget came back higher than the project can carry and you need to know what is actually driving it.
- A construction contract is in front of you and the scope, exclusions and allowances should be read by someone who has worked under one.
- The village keeps returning comments and the approval date keeps moving.
- Your team is capable but has no senior construction voice, and hiring one full time for one project does not make sense.
- You already have an opinion in-house and you want a second one from someone with no stake in the outcome.
- Construction has started and you want someone looking at what is happening in the field who is neither the contractor nor the architect.
- Everyone at the table has a job to do. None of those jobs is advocating for your investment across all of them.
04 / What ICM does
What ICM does
One job, start to finish: protect what you are putting in.
Engagements are shaped around where the project actually is. Some clients bring Mike in for a single review. Most keep him on from the first sketch through to the day the building is turned over. What follows is the full range. An engagement is built from the parts of it your project needs.
Concept and feasibility
Before there are drawings, there are assumptions. What are you building, what does the site allow, what will it realistically take to get there, and does that match the money and the calendar you have. Getting this honest early is what keeps a project from being redesigned twice.
Design and constructability
Working alongside your architects and engineers as the design develops, looking at how it gets built, what it costs, what it costs to maintain, and whether it still serves what you set out to do. Better to raise it at 50% drawings than in a change order.
Costs and contracts
Budgets and schedules built to be believed, bid scopes written so the gaps between trades belong to somebody, and contracts read closely: exclusions, allowances, assumptions and the language that decides who pays when the unexpected shows up.
Permitting and approvals
Zoning, submissions, reviews, revisions and resubmittals, coordinated with the municipality and the consultants until the approvals are in hand. Every jurisdiction has its own sequence and its own people. Knowing that is most of the work.
Construction through completion
Getting to a permit is a milestone, not a handoff. Mike stays on the job while it is built. He walks the site, works through RFIs and submittals with the design team, negotiates change orders, checks pay applications against what is actually in place, and tracks the schedule against the one the job was bid on. The scopes and contracts he is enforcing are the ones he helped write. He is there at the start, and he is there through punch list and closeout until the certificate of final occupancy is in your hands.
Across all of it
Owner's representation and advocacy
Architects, engineers, consultants, municipalities and contractors each carry a piece of the project and each answer to their own scope. Owner's representation is the seat that looks across all of them and asks what a given decision does to your budget, your schedule and the building you end up with. Mike's role in that group is advocate. He coordinates it without becoming an adversary to any of it, from the first conversation to the last item on the punch list. He reports to you.
05 / Concept to completion
Concept to completion
How a project moves.
Projects do not arrive in order and they rarely start at step one. This is the whole arc ICM works across. You can enter it anywhere, but the value of one person carrying it end to end is that nothing gets lost in a handoff.
Concept
Goals, program, aesthetics, feasibility and a first budget that reflects the real requirements of the site and the market.
Design
Constructability, cost and long-term upkeep tested against the drawings as they develop, with the design team rather than after them.
Costs & contracts
Budgets, schedules, bid scopes and contracts developed and reviewed. Gaps, assumptions and savings surface here or they surface later at a price.
Permitting
Zoning and permit submissions coordinated with municipal departments and consultants through comments, revisions and approval.
Construction
Build ready is a line the project crosses. The engagement continues past it, and the work gets watched against the scopes, the contracts and the budget it was bid on.
Completion
Punch list, closeout and the certificate of final occupancy. A finished building that matches what was decided at the start.
No one can promise a permit, a price or a schedule, and anyone who does is selling something. What you get is a project where those things were pressure-tested before construction by the same person who is still standing on the job when the work goes in.
06 / Project types
Project types
The four building types Mike knows best.
Ground-up development and major renovation, in the four building types Mike has spent his career on. This is his wheelhouse and he stays in it. Work outside these is better handled by someone whose experience is in it.
- Commercial
- Multi-family
- Industrial
- Land development
07 / Who you are hiring
Who you are hiring
Mike Iwan
ICM is not a firm you hire and then meet an account manager. It is Mike. He started the company in 2009, works out of Geneva, Illinois, and takes on a limited number of projects at a time across the Chicago area.
Thirty years in construction means he has seen what a clever detail costs to build, which assumptions in a budget tend to fail, and how a scope gap becomes an argument eighteen months later. Clients hire that judgment. They also get a straight answer, including when the answer is not the one they were hoping for.
He works with your design team, your consultants and your contractors, not against them. He is your advocate among them, and that obligation does not end at the permit. He is on the project at the beginning and he is still on it the day the certificate of final occupancy is issued.
- RolePresident, ICM Construction Management & Consulting, LLC
- Role on the jobOwner's advocate, concept through final occupancy
- ExperienceApproximately 30 years in construction
- ICM founded2009
- BasedGeneva, Illinois, serving the greater Chicago area
08 / In their words
In their words
Mike was professional and great to work with. He blended well with our team, and his expertise helped us work through issues and meet our goals.
Mike's expertise in pre-construction helped us create a better product that was more cost efficient.
09 / Start a conversation
Start a conversation
Tell Mike about the project.
Answer what you can. Mike reads these himself and will tell you whether this is work he can help with. If it is not, he will say that too.
Nothing confidential is required for a first conversation.
Geneva, Illinois / Greater Chicago area