JLL Expands Project Management Division With Acquisition of Gilliland Construction
The San Diego-based construction management company was launched in 2015 and now has a team of eight people.
JLL has acquired San Diego-based Gilliland Construction Management, a project management company that has experience working on life sciences, lab, retail, hospitality, industrial, multifamily and office properties. Kirt Gilliland, a construction-industry veteran, founded the firm in 2015, and has grown the company to a team of eight people.
As part of the acquisition, Gilliland will join JLL as SVP, overseeing the firm’s Project and Development Services business in San Diego, working with Jay Pich, regional managing director of JLL Southwest project and development services, who leads the division in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Hawaii, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The team currently oversees $3 billion in construction projects.
According to Peter Belisle, market director for JLL’s Southwest region, expanding the team has been a priority for the firm as a response to increasing development activity in life science, lab, industrial and multifamily. “From this point on, our clients will be able to tap a more robust platform of project and development services,” he said in a statement.
JLL has been expanding several service platforms. In June last year, it launched a data and insights platform that will help navigate portfolio optimization, facilities and operations, and space and workplace management issues, according to the company. Known as Azara, the platform uses a CRE data model organized across 30-plus pre-built dashboards. Users can analyze comparable lease properties in their respective markets and identify higher than ordinary facilities costs. The product also alerts facilities managers to immediate needs that impact employee workplace experiences. JLL maintains Azara offers significant benefits over competing solutions such as BI tools or the basic reporting features found in most applications. Azara also combines user data with JLL’s proprietary market research and data sources to contextualize portfolio among markets and competitors.
And earlier this year, JLL acquired JLL has acquired Hank, an AI-powered, virtual engineering platform that autonomously optimizes commercial buildings’ management systems in effort to improve air quality, energy savings and comfort. The Sacramento-based Prop-Tech company’s system applies machine learning and AI to solve operational challenges within the commercial real estate industry, such as HVAC programming inconsistencies and energy and equipment performance inefficiencies.