Industrial & Food Processing · Chicagoland · N. Indiana · S. Wisconsin
Owner-led design-build construction management for food processors and industrial owners expanding, converting, or building from the ground up, $1M to $35M. We commit to your production-ready date and put 10% of our fee behind it.
Owner-led design-build construction management for food processors: ground-up USDA facilities and conversions of existing industrial stock, built around the operational realities of food plants.
Before you pick a builder
Who runs the project, and how it gets delivered. Both are settled long before anyone breaks ground, and both do more to set your date and your budget than the drawings ever will.
| Wright Construction ManagementWCM Owner-led design-build CM. Jeremy runs your job start to finish, and puts fee behind your production date. | In-House TeamIn-House Knows the plant, but built to run it, not to buy out trades and absorb a capital project on top of the day job. | Large General ContractorLarge GC Real bench strength at national-firm pricing. On a mid-size job you get whichever PM is free, two levels below the principal. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No OverheadNo Overhead | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ |
| FlexibilityFlexibility | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| High RetentionHigh Retention | ✓ | ✕ | – |
| Owner LedOwner Led | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Food Processing & USDA-Specific ExperienceFood Processing / USDA Experience | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| QualityQuality | ✓ | ✓ | – |
| SpeedSpeed | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| PM FocusPM Focus | ✓ | ✕ | – |
| Builds Around Live ProductionBuilds Around Live Production | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Same Team From Concept Through CloseoutSame Team, Concept To Closeout | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Single Point of AccountabilitySingle Point of Accountability | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Food-Experienced Trade Partner NetworkFood-Experienced Trade Network | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Local Trade & AHJ ContactsLocal Trade & AHJ Contacts | ✓ | ✕ | – |
| Cost TransparencyCost Transparency | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Cost EffectivenessCost Effectiveness | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Fee at Risk For Your Production DateFee At Risk For Your Production Date | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ |
Reflects typical delivery on $1M–$35M food processing and industrial projects. A large general contractor carries real bench strength and low relative overhead at scale, but at a higher cost of delivery, with the principal you met rarely on your job. An in-house team brings plant knowledge and build quality, without capital-project bandwidth.
| Design-BuildDesign-Build One contract, one team. Design and construction run together under a single point of accountability. | Design-Bid-BuildDesign-Bid-Build Design fully, then bid it, then build it. Three sequential phases and two separate contracts held by the owner. | |
|---|---|---|
| Single Point of AccountabilitySingle Point of Accountability | ✓ | ✕ |
| One Contract for Design & ConstructionOne Contract, Design + Build | ✓ | ✕ |
| Design & Construction OverlapDesign + Construction Overlap | ✓ | ✕ |
| Constructability Input During DesignConstructability Input In Design | ✓ | ✕ |
| Early Budget CertaintyEarly Budget Certainty | ✓ | ✕ |
| Price Locked Before Drawings Are FinalPrice Locked Before Final Drawings | ✓ | ✕ |
| Fully Defined Scope Before PricingFully Defined Scope Before Pricing | ✕ | ✓ |
| Open Competitive Hard BidOpen Competitive Hard Bid | ✕ | ✓ |
| Owner Holds the Designer DirectlyOwner Holds Designer Directly | ✕ | ✓ |
| Design Errors Carried by the BuilderDesign Errors Carried By Builder | ✓ | ✕ |
| Fewer Owner-Borne Change OrdersFewer Owner-Borne Change Orders | ✓ | ✕ |
| Long-Lead Equipment Bought During DesignLong-Lead Equipment In Design | ✓ | ✕ |
| Value Engineered Before Drawings Are FinalVE Before Drawings Are Final | ✓ | ✕ |
| Teaming CultureTeaming Culture | ✓ | ✕ |
| Entire Team’s Contract Incentives In AlignmentTeam Incentives In Alignment | ✓ | ✕ |
| Less Time Wasted on Administrative TasksLess Time Wasted On Admin Tasks | ✓ | ✕ |
| Lower Owner BurdenLower Owner Burden | ✓ | ✕ |
| Fastest Path to ProductionFastest Path To Production | ✓ | ✕ |
Reflects typical delivery on $1M–$35M food processing and industrial projects. Design-bid-build has real strengths: a complete drawing set before anyone prices the work, an open hard bid on identical scope, and a designer who answers only to the owner. It trades schedule for that certainty. Design finishes before construction starts, and scope gaps surface as change orders once the low bid is signed.
The number nobody budgets
Most owners budget the building. Almost nobody budgets the delay. Put your own numbers in and see what a month is actually worth.
Two months late is $600,505.
Two months early is the same number, in your pocket.
That is a $1,201,011 swing, decided before anyone breaks ground.
Our Promise
Not a brochure promise. Contract language, with a defined exclusion list we will walk you through on the first call.
At Budget Lock, once design is defined and the trades are bought, we jointly set your Production-Ready Date. Miss it for reasons within our control and you receive a credit of 10% of the CM fee.
We will not collect any fee on change orders arising from our scope gaps, coordination misses, or buyout errors. If we missed it, we do not get paid to fix it. Our historic change order average is under 1% of contract value.
Zero unplanned shutdowns of your production caused by our work. If we cause one, we credit $2,500 per hour and our team works the recovery at no fee.
Your feasibility study is delivered in 15 business days from receipt of documents and site access, or it is free. Proceed within 12 months and the full fee credits back to you.
Why we can promise it
Four mechanisms, and every one of them attacks time. That is why the guarantee is the natural output of how we work rather than a promise bolted onto it.
Fifteen business days. Utility capacity, the AHJ path, inspection sequencing, sanitary design, and existing-condition risk forced into the open before capital is committed, as a register with owners, dates, and dollar ranges attached. Most schedule loss is created here, long before anyone breaks ground.
Every long-lead item, permit, utility approval, and inspection gets a named owner, a must-order-by date, and a float budget, treated exactly like a bid package. Schedule is procured, not hoped for.
Construction phased around your sanitation windows, shipping commitments, and line uptime, not crew convenience. Partitions, negative-air containment, dust control, off-hour tie-ins, and access routing are scoped and priced, not improvised in the field.
You work with the owner of the company, not a junior PM two levels down. Weekly cost-to-complete, weekly constraint removal, and a live dashboard showing exactly where cost, schedule, and open decisions stand. A 1,500-person firm structurally cannot do this on a mid-size job.
| Phase | The outcome it produces |
|---|---|
| Feasibility | A go or no-go you can take to your board or your lender |
| Design Management | A design you can actually afford to build |
| Trade & Schedule Buyout | Finalizing schedule and budget |
| Budget Lock | A number and a date you can commit to a customer |
| Active-Plant Execution | You keep making product while we build |
| Turnover & Startup | You pass inspection the first time and start on the date |
| Year One | One number, one accountable person, for the first 12 months |
Proof
A $22.3M design-build renovation and expansion of a 123,000 SF food processing facility, and the largest single project we have delivered. Structural concrete, refrigeration, insulated metal panel walls and ceilings, and a new electrical service, coordinated start to finish by one accountable person.
A greenfield 700,000 SF pork processing plant, one of the largest USDA-grade facilities of its kind, built to full sanitary, refrigeration, and inspection standards and delivered on schedule against a fixed commissioning window tied to production commitments.
An addition to an operational pork processing plant at roughly $1,200 per square foot, built around live production without interrupting the line. Phasing, temporary partitions, off-hour work, and tight equipment and utility tie-ins, with food safety controls maintained throughout.
Seaboard Triumph Foods · Triumph Foods · Prestage Foods · Amigos Meat · Ventura Foods · Mistica Foods · Martin Produce · Alfa Laval · Interlake Mecalux · Eaton · Silver Birch · Vermilion Development
Fit
How it starts
Ninety minutes on site. You get a written six-page brief on utilities, drainage, permit path, inspection sequence, and what would actually have to happen.
Zoning check, concept test-fit, ROM budget with the assumptions exposed, milestone schedule, long-lead flags, and a risk register.
A letter of intent and a retainer put the team to work. Design starts, long-lead pricing opens, and your slot on the calendar is held.
Architects and engineers managed to your targets, trades and schedule bought out, then the number and your Production-Ready Date are locked.
Full design-build CM with all four guarantee layers, the owner dashboard, and every included service below.
The feasibility fee credits back in full against your CM fee if you proceed within 12 months. And if the study tells you not to do the project, that is a good outcome too, cheaper to find out now than after you've signed a lease and bought equipment.
| Included at no charge | What it is | If bought separately |
|---|---|---|
| Utility & AHJ Readiness Brief | Address-specific service capacity, utility lead times, likely permit path, health department and fire marshal involvement | $4,500 |
| Long-Lead Equipment Clock | Procurement calendar built backward from your production date, with must-order-by dates per package | $2,500 |
| USDA Conversion Readiness Kit | Checklist plus sanitary detail library: floors, drains, assemblies, penetrations, RTE separation, condensation control | $3,500 |
| Active-Plant Playbook | Phasing, partitions, negative air, dust control, sanitation windows, off-hour tie-ins, traffic and access | $3,000 |
| Owner Visibility Dashboard | Live cost, schedule, procurement, and open-decision status. No waiting for a vague weekly update. | $6,000/yr |
| Cost Segregation Coordination | Partner-delivered study; typically accelerates 5 to 9 percent of building cost into year-one depreciation | $12,000+ |
| 12-Month Warranty Concierge | One number, one accountable person, for the first year of operation | $4,000 |
Straight answers
That is normally the right time. The decisions that set your cost and your date are the ones being made right now: which building, what layout, what the utilities have to carry. By the time there is a drawing set, most of the cost is already locked in. The Risk Audit is free and takes ninety minutes. If it says you're not ready, you've lost ninety minutes.
Good, you should. Two questions: has anyone confirmed your electrical service and sewer capacity can carry the new load, and has anyone given you a written permit path for your specific AHJ? If yes, you're in good shape and we'll get out of your way. If not, that is what the free audit covers, and you're welcome to hand the brief straight to your contractor.
That is the sequence that hurts owners most. Design without a cost partner produces a set you can't afford, and then you pay to redesign it. Your P&L feels that twice. We manage the architect against your budget from the start, so the design fits your capital reality instead of the other way around.
Our largest single project is Mistica Foods on Runge Street in Franklin Park: a $22.3M design-build renovation and expansion of a 123,000 SF food processing facility. Structural concrete, refrigeration, insulated metal panel walls and ceilings, and a new electrical service, all inside an operating Chicagoland food plant. It was run start to finish by one person.
That answers the size question, and it answers the staffing question at the same time. At a national firm a mid-size job gets whichever project manager happens to be free. Here you get the person who has already delivered a project larger than yours, on every project, because we only take three or four at a time. Behind that: $820M of construction managed, including a 700,000 SF greenfield USDA plant for Seaboard Triumph.
Agreed, and that is scope, not a promise. Containment, negative air, dust control, traffic routing, and sanitation window coordination are in the phasing plan and they're priced. We also commit to zero unplanned shutdowns caused by our work, with a $2,500 per hour credit if we cause one.
We do not collect any fee on change orders that come from our scope gaps, coordination misses, or buyout errors. If we missed it, we do not get paid to fix it. Owner-directed changes and genuinely unforeseen conditions are still yours, and we won't pretend otherwise. But our mistakes are ours.
Because a date set too early is not confidence, it is a guess. Guaranteeing a production date before design is defined and the trades are bought is not something anyone can stand behind. We set the date once the scope map, the buyout, and the long-lead plan are real. That is what makes it a commitment rather than a marketing number.
Then you should, and we'll bid it. We'd only ask that you compare guarantees alongside fees, because that is where the difference actually shows up. And if you want the bids to be comparable, the feasibility study is what gives all three the same scope to price. Otherwise you're comparing three different projects.
No cost, no commitment, and no obligation to use us for anything that follows. If your building won't work for food production, we'd rather tell you now than after you've signed the lease.
Jeremy Wright · Wright Construction Management · jwright@wrightcm.co · Chicagoland, Northern Indiana & Southern Wisconsin