Each year in early December, members of Beacon's team gather in Boston for our annual company meeting and holiday dinner. This year, our meeting was held on December 7th at the Omni Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston.
On behalf of everyone at Beacon Consulting Group, I would like to wish you and your family Happy Holidays and best wishes for a healthy, happy, and successful New Year.
It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our friend Mike Paquet, who passed away peacefully in early December after being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. In recent years, Mike worked as a construction consultant for Beacon, mostly working on site to help monitor, supervise and expedite the completion of construction projects on behalf of surety companies.
Beacon's NYC office is just a few blocks away from some of the most amazing skyscraper construction projects underway in the U.S. One building our team has enjoyed watching rise two blocks west of Penn Station is One Manhattan West, a 995-foot-tall tower which was topped out in September of 2018. A unique aspect of the building is its reinforced-concrete core design. According to the firm which designed the building, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the concrete core design was the solution to the project's most challenging aspect—being built directly above New York City's active west side rail lines which lead to Penn Station.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving break last week. This year, there are many things we are thankful for at Beacon Consutling Group. As we celebrate our 15th year in business, we have continued to develop our team and capabilities to take on an ever-growing range of professional construction consulting assignments. In 2018, our team has been working hard on projects from coast to coast.
Summer in the Northeast seems to pass in the blink of an eye. October is here and Autumn is already in full-swing, with all of its excitement and activity. While we welcome having crisp weather, football season, and kids back in school, it's good to hold on to some warm summer memories as the days grow colder.
According to data from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, as of August of 2018 there were 14,400 more construction industry jobs in Southeast Florida compared to August of 2017. This included 3,900 more contruction jobs in Broward County, 3,800 in Palm Beach County, and 6,700 in Miami-Dade County.
Mike Paquet has traveled all around the U.S. working on construction consulting assignments for Beacon. Mike's decades of experience as a general contractor, site superintendent, and construction consultant make him a valued member of Beacon's team. His deep knowledge of all types of construction projects and extensive hands-on experience managing GCs and subcontractors help him to excel in his role of overseeing the on-site turn-around, monitoring and closeout of various construction projects for Beacon's Surety clients.
Throughout 2018, Beacon Consulting Group provided construction consulting and surety consulting services to a leading Surety company related to a building construction project in Miami, Florida. The building is now finished and the facility opened for commercial use in September of 2018.
Marcus Lehner is a talented project engineer and surety consultant with extensive experience working on construction consulting assignments. A native of Long Island, NY, Marcus now lives in the Boston area.