Associate, US Real Estate - Diversified Construction Management

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Job Description

Position Summary

The Ares Diversified Construction Management team supports the real estate equity investment and acquisitions, development, asset management, and debt teams from underwriting through due diligence, pre-development, construction, and operation phases. The team’s primary focus is on design and quality control, budget management, and schedule management throughout these phases. We are currently involved in more than 100 (multifamily, industrial, hospitality, retail, office) projects in various stages of development throughout major markets across the country.

The Project Manager Associate is responsible for providing support to ground-up and renovation construction projects as overseen by senior team members as well as driving day-to-day coordination of certain project responsibilities. The position is responsible for communicating across various internal and external stakeholders and will be the primary point of contact for the workstreams they are managing. The environment is fast-paced, and this individual will be expected to immediately contribute to the team’s success.

Essential Duties

• Budget Management
  • Provide budgetary analysis on all preliminary estimates and establish final target budgets.
  • Provide assistance with Value Engineering exercises and provide ongoing design improvements.
  • Provide assistance with the development and execution of a construction contract to construct the project.
  • Provide a record of any occurrence of work that might result in a claim for a budget or schedule adjustment. Review change orders as submitted by the general contractor.
  • Review general contractors’ monthly pay application. Review the developer’s draw request or prepare and submit the draw request to ensure proper fiduciary oversight on the equity outlays.
  • Assist in quarterly reprojection of cost to complete the project(s) and identify potential savings and overages against commitments.

• Schedule Management
  • Assist in the review or development of a preliminary project schedule to ensure successful delivery of the project on-time.
  • Perform construction activity monitoring from groundbreaking to Substantial Completion.
  • Monitor construction schedule and alert manager to conditions that may lead to delays in the completion of work and/or opportunities for schedule improvement.
  • Assist with creating and implementing the owner design and FF&E schedules or other applicable schedules outside the control of the general contractor.
• Perform due diligence review of applicable materials affecting the existing conditions of the property in underwriting.
• Review the general contractor’s correspondence, logs, RFI’s, submittals, meeting minutes, change orders, record drawings, and any modifications at intervals appropriate to the stage of construction.
• Attend Owner-Architect-Contractor (“OAC”) progress meetings and all other scheduled meetings with architect, engineer, general contractor or subcontractors necessary to support the project.
• Visit and inspect the project for status of progress against the general contractor’s schedules and schedule of values, and confirm project is progressing in general compliance with the contract documents.
• Actively engage with all key stakeholders on the project(s) to deliver on-time, on-budget, and to a quality standard and finish specified in the construction documents and expected from the investment opportunity.
• Advocate on behalf of the Company during disputes, disagreements, modifications, or change orders.
• Provide real time communication of any major issue impacting the project(s) to your manager in a timely manner. Seek necessary approval from your manager on major design decisions, budget adjustments, and schedule changes impacting the project(s).
• Prepare and maintain regular reporting including design, construction, budget, and schedule activities and risks. Prepare presentation materials and analyses to effectively present content.
• Receive and review owner’s documentation required at the completion of the construction period of work, included but not limited to a