Ep 1: The Owner's Role with Chad Kruse

Nobody wakes up wanting to be an owner. But the owner's seat might be the most consequential seat in design and construction, and it is the least understood. In this first episode, we start where every project starts: with the person who has to hold it all together before anyone else is even in the room.

GUEST

Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning across one of the country's major academic medical centers. With 25 years in the industry spanning general contracting, design firms, and owner roles, Chad brings a perspective that is equal parts operational and deeply human. He is one of the clearest thinkers in the business on what it actually means to lead from the owner's seat.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

• Why the owner's role is consistently underestimated and what genuine owner leadership actually looks like in practice
• How the pressure to move fast at the start of a project creates problems that no amount of good design or construction can fix later
• Why picking the right team has more to do with people than brands, and how Chad approaches that decision under time pressure
• How front-end planning works at the project level, and why you cannot rush or replicate that time
• What procurement and contracting choices signal about an owner's priorities before a single drawing is made
• Why Chad's institution pursued IPD, what surprised them when they got into it, and what integration actually looks like when it stops being a philosophy and becomes daily behavior

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 - Introduction and what this podcast is trying to do
• 03:29 - Chad's background, from GC to owner, and why he keeps coming back
• 07:21 - What a good owner actually looks like and the stewardship mindset
• 09:30 - The convergence challenge: clinical, operational, financial, and design, all at once
• 13:25 - Why you cannot fast-forward front-end planning, at the project or career level
• 17:46 - A real $30M project that started with a phone call and what made it work
• 19:50 - How procurement and contracting decisions shape everything downstream
• 22:13 - Why owners need sociology more than technical expertise
• 27:37 - Picking teams: people over brands, and what that looks like under pressure
• 32:26 - Staying ahead of how the industry is changing
• 34:03 - IPD in practice: what Chad's institution learned going through it for the first time
• 39:39 - Advice for anyone who wants to get into the owner's role

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Gallup CliftonStrengths
• National Academy of Construction

WHERE TO FIND CHAD

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ Nebraska Medicine: https://www.nebraskamed.com