A Better Way to Build: A History of the Pankow Companies by Michael R. Adamson (review)

It is refreshing to come across a book about an American builder for a change. Much has been written over the years about the professional side of the design and construction industry, the architects and engineers, but the men and women who transform their designs into reality have been largely ignored. Not only is this a book about Charles Pankow’s life and career and the companies he founded but it also focuses on his mission to change the way that buildings were designed and built.

Pankow was born in 1923 and graduated in 1947, after military service, from Purdue University with a degree in civil engineering. After two years with a structural engineering firm, he moved briefly in 1950 to the Austin Company and then joined the Peter Kiewit Sons company a year later, one of the largest of America’s contractors to the present day. His short stay with Austin may well have influenced his future approach to design and construction. Austin was founded in 1904 and, by the time Pankow joined them, had refined its business model to become the leading most respected firm in the country offering owners design-build services.

The 1950s and 1960s, the period during which he started his career and established his own company, was a turbulent period in the construction business. Adjustment to the postwar economy came quickly and with it came a renewed belligerency by the unions, which even the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act was not able to tame. This was followed by an uptick in inflation in the 1960s, which was particularly acute in construction. By 1969, construction prices had increased 81 percent faster since 1949 than the consumer price index. All these increases were passed along to the owners who eventually revolted. The Construction Users Anti-inflation Roundtable was formed in 1969 with a focus on improving productivity in the industry. In construction, it is only when the owners rise up that change occurs, and change indeed began to happen and continues to this day. In particular, a search began for alternative methods of project delivery to improve on the traditional linear design-bid-build approach.

It was in this milieu that Pankow began his own company, Charles Pankow Inc.(CPI), in 1963 after twelve years with Kiewit. This period is well described in the book. It is at Kiewit that he gathers around him a competent and dedicated team, develops commitment and experience in working with reinforced concrete, and senses that the introduction of the contractors expertise before designs are finalized can bring about huge savings in cost and time. In particular, Pankow and his team developed skills in the use of slip-forming concrete cores in buildings and the use of precasting and pre- and posttensioning.

In 1962, Pankow splits with Peter Kiewit over the Los Angeles Music Center and realizes that Kiewit is primarily a civil contractor with little interest in the building market. With his new company, Pankow concentrates on private sector commercial projects to be built with concrete and targets a 15 percent profit, high for contractors at that time. CPI establishes itself through the 1960s mostly in California and also in Hawaii where a highly successful office was set up in 1965. In 1971 CPI, who had been building offices and condominiums for developers, drifted into development by transforming into a merchant builder with its own account. Unlike many builders who are tempted into this field, Pankow was very successful. His company profited, and he established his fortune.

As Design-Build grew in popularity as an alternative project delivery system in the 1980s, Charles Pankow Builders Ltd.(CPB), as the company was then called, was very supportive in promoting its use. In 1992, they joined with other like-minded companies and consultants in forming the Design-Build Institute of America. Rik Kunnath of CPB became its second chairman...