James Conlow, CEO, was born in California and grew up in a family that has been in real-estate development and construction for four generations. He began his formal construction training as an apprentice carpenter at age 14, completing this hands-on apprenticeship during his college years, working on residential and commercial projects from the ground up. He completed his full time college education when he was recruited to Parsons which offered practical management training and experience on major projects. Jim started with Parsons prior to finishing his degree. At Parsons Jim was put through a management training program wherein he worked in several departments including engineering design, estimating, scheduling, and field supervision. In the early 1980s Jim moved to Hoffman as marketing vice-president. Hoffman is a major developer of commercial, residential and mixed use projects. In this position Jim was responsible for helping to initiate new projects as well as gaining new customers and then following the projects through completion – thus he was responsible for initial ideas, pro forma planning, estimating, project management and had bottom line profit and loss responsibility.

Jim then started his own company, Conlow Construction, which successfully completed energy projects (including wind energy farms) and commercial projects as well as high quality residential.  

In 1985 Conlow Construction was acquired by CSS where Jim became the Executive Vice President. At CSS Jim had complete operational and profit and loss responsibility for hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate development projects including mixed use, commercial projects, manufacturing, retail, multi-family residential, healthcare and bio-tech. At CSS Jim was responsible for all aspects of development from initiation of ideas through completion including site selection, master planning, financing, execution and facilities management. Under Jim’s leadership this company successfully and profitably completed multiple concurrent projects with overall managed personnel headcounts of over 5,000 persons. Jim worked closely with real estate developers and financiers during project initiation through completion.

In 2001, Jim invented an improvement in the management of development projects. A description of this can be found in the publications. This improvement includes use of practical lean production principles and modern technologies. Jim applied for patents, which are pending, and started Cortexion, Inc. Cortexion completed the technology platform and has provided services and technology for several years. Cortexion provides a full range of services to help project owners achieve total mission success at lowest cost and risk. 

Jim has specific expertise and the contacts to help clients with Financing, Execution, Strategy, Lean Construction, and Technology.

Please review the following white paper for an overview of how Jim can help your development process.