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Kelly Millsaps compiled and distributed. Getting data earlier allows for course
corrections as part of a regular business rhythm and reduces
Chief Technology Officer the impact of negative trends as they are caught earlier.
Related Companies, Hudson Yards
Historically, building technology infrastructure investments
Kelly Millsaps is the CTO for Related Companies’ 28 acre Hudson are extremely capital intensive and offer little incentive to keep
Yards development on the west side of Manhattan. In this role, up with advances, as there are limited options to fund the
he is responsible for technology strategy for the largest private incremental costs. A new building opens with ‘leading’ tech-
construction project ever undertaken in the United States. Kelly nology and within a few years that space no longer offers a
has over 20 years of experience leveraging technology to achieve competitive technology experience relative to new buildings.
business outcomes and drive differentiation. Previously, Kelly was We have been evolving a business model that seeks to ensure
the Chief Technology Officer for Avanade’s U.S. Central Region that Hudson Yards buildings offer market leading technology
where he focused on systems integration, infrastructure, and
application solutions for Global 2000 organizations.

Highlights of 2014
Technology initiatives have focused on creating complete
visibility into development and construction activities and
evolving our Smart City strategy. Three projects demonstrate
recent progress and provide visibility into how technology is
increasingly important to our core business.

A few years ago, we began the largest development project
in our history, Hudson Yards. The project will ultimately include
more than 17 million square feet of state of the art commercial,
residential, retail, and public spaces. As the development in-
cludes the participation of multiple construction management,
architecture, and engineering partners, the capability to coor-
dinate work, collaborate, and generally ‘instrument’ all aspects
of the project effectively was important to how predictably the
development could be brought to market. New capabilities fo-
cused on construction management, cost management, auto-
mated workflow, and reporting were needed. The pilot program
for what became known as the Construction Management
System (CMS) began in 2013. The CMS solution went live into
production in 2014 and is currently coordinating the activities
of more than 1,400 actors in development and construction
across our entire portfolio. The challenges in evolving this capa-
bility have been numerous. Standardizing processes with our
partners was difficult. Each had mature, but different approach-
es to work management. Integration with ERP systems, data
warehouses, and other systems included all of the usual pain
points. The hard earned new capability embodied in the CMS
has enormous benefits, driving complete visibility of key project
information that improves collaboration, drives accountability,
and reduces risk.

The CMS serves as a data platform that captures a wide
range of project data and allows us to build better and timelier
construction reports. We are able to provide near real-time visi-
bility into a variety of information that allows us to make better
decisions and execute more effectively. As an example, a report
used to communicate the estimated cost to complete a project
is updated daily. Historically, the business was managed with
data that could be several weeks old by the time the report was

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