Omō Strategic Preconstruction Leadership

06/02/2026

Twenty-three years ago, I went to interior design school dreaming of historic Southern properties.

Layered rooms. Old buildings. Places with memory.

That dream evolved into commercial interiors, healthcare, education, construction, preconstruction, and owner’s representation.

But the design foundation never left.

The Inn at Carnall Hall brings all of it back together.

A 49-room historic boutique hotel on the University of Arkansas campus. Named for Ella Howison Carnall, one of the university’s first female graduates and later a professor of English and modern languages.

Her name has been on the building for more than a century.

Now her story gets to shape what comes next.

Omō is serving as owner’s representative, design direction lead, and FF&E procurement manager.

This is where design, story, scope, budget, schedule, procurement, and preconstruction finally meet.

Preconstruction is not just for construction. It is a posture — the discipline of answering the hard questions before money moves.

For me, this is the full circle.

Follow along. This one is special.

05/28/2026

Most people assume preconstruction is about numbers. For me, it starts with people.

My graduate research at the University of Oklahoma tested what actually makes architects, owners, project managers, and superintendents want to share information with each other. I studied 53 professionals across ten factors — and presented the findings at the Associated Schools of Construction international conference in Liverpool.

The results surprised me: intrinsic motivation — the personal desire to succeed — mattered most. Competence trust came second. Contract trust? Further down. Monetary compensation? Last.

That finding didn't just inform my practice. It explained a decade of experiences I hadn't been able to fully articulate. The misalignments that hardened into conflict. The moments where everyone was technically doing their job and the project was still falling apart.

It's why Omō works at the front end — before contracts harden positions, before silos form, when alignment is still possible based on competence and shared goals rather than legal obligation.

This isn't consulting based on gut instinct. It's a practice built on published research.

Link in bio to learn more.

Pictured: presenting this research at the Associated Schools of Construction conference in Liverpool.

05/19/2026

A few weeks out from the CREW Network Founders Council meeting in Denver, and I'm still processing what made it different.

17 women who founded their own commercial real estate firms. Owner's reps, developers, capital advisors, project managers. Selected from 150+ applicants for a year-long peer advisory program.

The application asked one question: What's your biggest problem as a founder?
Mine: whether to scale Omō into a team-based consultancy or maintain high-touch strategic work where I'm directly involved in every project.

Sitting in a room with founders at similar inflection points - growth vs. focus, systems vs. relationships, revenue vs. impact - didn't give me an answer. But it made the path forward clearer through conversation, not advice.

The value isn't the highlight reel. It's the middle. The messy, honest conversations about what it actually takes to build something that matters while figuring out what version of "growth" serves the work you're trying to do.

Grateful for this group and the year ahead.

05/14/2026

In 2021, I walked into a construction management firm with no systems, no process, and no preconstruction department to speak of. So I decided to build one from scratch.

What started as an internal operating standard I wrote — and watched get shelved — eventually became the foundation of Omō.

At the Advancing Preconstruction Summit in Phoenix, Gareth McGlynn of the Preconstruction Podcast told me to publish it. Dr. Doyle T. Phillips — Construction Science professor at OU, Fellow of the Construction Specifications Institute, and former preconstruction leader at Nabholz — called it the most comprehensive approach he'd seen.

So I'm going to.

Section by section over the coming months — the philosophy, the process, and the gaps most firms never address. The full document will eventually live at workwithomo.com.

It doesn't include AI yet. That's intentional. You can't layer technology onto a broken process and call it progress. The foundation comes first.

This series is for owners who've been burned by a project that wasn't set up right. For CM firms trying to build a preconstruction department that actually functions. For anyone who suspects the problem started before construction did.
It starts next month.

05/12/2026

05/08/2026

Two days in Phoenix at the Advancing Preconstruction Summit.
Preconstruction is having a moment — and it's about time.

AI, procurement-led design, smarter risk frameworks, technology that's actually built for how projects work. The people pushing this forward are thoughtful, experienced, and genuinely excited about what's coming.

What I'll carry home isn't just the sessions or the frameworks. It's the reminder that the best work happens when the right people are aligned early — before contracts harden positions, before budgets are locked, before the pressure of construction sets in.

That's the work I love. And this week reminded me why.

03/28/2026

Grand opening day for City & Stars Midtown is officially wrapped, and I couldn’t be more proud of what Michelle Chan brought to life in the historic Plaza Court Building.

This is a major move for the brand—relocating from the original West Village location to this larger, more refined Midtown flagship with better walkability and synergy with the surrounding district. The 1,100 SF triangular footprint with two different structural systems presented a unique challenge: custom arched dressing rooms, ash wood details throughout, coastal finishes that adapt the design prototype we created for their Austin location last year to this historic OKC space.

Omō led owner’s representation and coordinated the design-build approach with Gardner Studio to bring Michelle’s vision to life—refining what worked in Austin and translating it to Midtown.
Watching this go from feasibility to today’s opening has been incredibly rewarding. Congratulations Michelle—this space is everything it should be. 🤍

.studio

DesignBuild

03/10/2026

The Jim Thorpe Memorial Building renovation was one of those projects where everything had to align from day one. A nearly 100-year-old, 158,000-square-foot Oklahoma City landmark. A design-build delivery method that put the contractor in the lead role—an unfamiliar structure for the team. Historic preservation requirements meeting modern code and ADA compliance. A $60 million budget with ambitious scope.

While serving as Preconstruction Director at QUAD Construction, I knew early collaboration would make or break this project. Before preconstruction formally began, I engaged field teams to inform design decisions—because with historic buildings, what you assume and what you find are often very different. That early investment in investigation and stakeholder alignment set the foundation for everything that followed.

More on this project to come as construction wraps this summer. https://www.workwithomo.com/jim-thorpe-memorial-building-renovation

03/10/2026

My first stop in construction lasted five months. That's how long it took me to realize I couldn't work in a system where teams weren't allowed to talk to each other.

I'd just transitioned from working at architectural firms into construction, eager to learn the latter end of how projects become reality. What I found instead was dysfunction disguised as process. The contractor didn't like the architect. I wasn't allowed to call them to ask questions. I had to send RFIs through an archaic software system that took weeks—sometimes months—to get a reply, only to find we didn't get the answer we needed. The process repeated. The project dragged on. It was a hard bid project, which meant everyone was positioned adversarially before we even started. No one was actually talking.

I knew there had to be a better way. So I left for a design-build firm, hoping integrated delivery would solve the communication problem. It helped—but the work was residential, and I wanted to pursue commercial historic projects. So I moved to a mid-sized construction management firm. The CM approach was at least more collaborative than hard bid, but it still didn't get it right. After another CM firm and years of testing my graduate research findings against real preconstruction processes, I finally found the recipe for success: align teams early, create communication frameworks that actually work, and solve coordination issues before they reach the field.

But when those processes weren't integrated into the firms I worked for—when preconstruction kept getting treated as just another phase instead of strategic leadership—I knew I needed to pull it away from the CM structure entirely. That's when I launched Omō: an independent preconstruction service dedicated exclusively to the front end, appointed as owner's advocate, committed to creating the synergies needed to find the right cost, the right team, and the right approach to get projects over the finish line. To my knowledge, it's the first firm structured this way. Because after twenty years of watching the same problems repeat across different delivery methods, I finally built the solution I kept looking for.

02/24/2026

The Modus Construction headquarters was a shell space when I stepped in—structurally complete but undefined. No furniture. Minimal layout. Just open square footage waiting for purpose. This is exactly the kind of work Omō was founded on: seeing the big picture and letting it trickle down into every detail.

How do people move through the space? Where does collaboration happen versus focused work? What finishes create an environment that's welcoming and supports workflow? I handled space planning from that empty shell forward—defining zones, specifying glazing partitions that create openness with intention, directing custom millwork including a featured conference room wall with uplight wainscoting, and managing all FF&E selection and procurement with Copelin Furniture. The result is 2,638 square feet that doesn't just function—it feels right. Strategic preconstruction means protecting the big picture all the way down to the details that make a space actually work. https://www.modusokc.com/