Skanska USA Building builds big. One of the 10 largest general contractors in the United States, its Swedish owners bought Blue Bell-based Barclay White in 2000; added their name and capital; built a national staff of engineers, architects, and managers; and now have offices directing construction in New York and California, Texas and Florida, the Pacific Northwest and New England, and more.

Teams attached to Skanska’s Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, office have built projects at Philadelphia International Airport, the Market Street retail district. A different team has done Delaware River bridge job. Lately the group has focused on the slow-growing region’s top employment sectors: schools — Swarthmore College, Lehigh University, Mastery Charter Schools, and University of Delaware — and life sciences — hospitals such as the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson Health, Main Line Health, and Inspira, and pharmacy giants such as Johnson & Johnson and GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline).

Now, with federal funding cuts to “eds and meds,” Skanska and its rivals are looking at what’s next. Todd Lofgren, executive vice president and general manager of the Conshohocken office, agreed to take questions from The Inquirer. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: There was concern President Donald Trump’s import taxes, immigrant deportations, and DOGE cuts to higher ed and medicine, would slow construction. You’re still busy?

A: There was apprehension. Today the skies are clearing a bit. Opportunities that we expected would be built in 2025, are coming to fruition. There’s a pipeline of projects. The industry is cautiously optimistic.

Q: Colleges, too?

A: Some of the local higher education institutions have had budget cuts. They haven’t been able to do deferred maintenance. Projects that were planned over the next three years have gone on to five years.

The larger institutions, the who’s who academic institutions, are moving forward with capital projects and maintenance. But they are also saying, “This will be the last big one for now. We will circle the wagons.”

Q: Some of last year’s warehouse builders say they’ve switched to AI data centers. You, too?

A: We do a significant amount of data center work across the country — in Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, up in the Pacific Northwest.

In this region, we’ve seen data center activity primarily in central Pennsylvania, and we’re gaining traction there. We now have our Skanska Advanced Technology Group, with subject-matter experts in data centers, positioned to come into Pennsylvania to help do those projects.

The players are the Big Tech companies, the Amazons and Googles and Microsofts. And the developers.

Q: Why upstate, not in the cities, where the customers are?

A: It all comes down to, can you get the electric power you need?

A lot of data centers want to set up shop near the nuclear stations. Can Limerick (Constellation Energy’s Montgomery County, Pennslvania, nuclear power station, which is seeking a 340-megawatt increase to its 2,300-megawatt production) increase capacity? Can the Salem nuclear plant support the (Starwood Digital Ventures’ “Project Washington“) big data center they are proposing in Delaware?

Q: The Trump administration also says it wants more industry. Hanwha says it could spend $5 billion on a bigger Philly Shipyard. Are you bidding on new factory projects?

A: Pharmaceutical manufacturers are already investing billions in moving manufacturing back to the United States. They want to have more control over their product. Cracks in third-party supply chains were exposed during COVID. The tariff discussion is a factor.

Eli Lilly is talking about major expansion. Johnson & Johnson also wants to invest in the U.S. Merck just said it will spend $1 billion on a plant (to make cancer drug Keytruda, which accounts for half Merck sales) in Delaware.

We looked at the Glaxo (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, vaccine plant planned for) Marietta job. We’ve done lot of work for Glaxo. A lot of the big companies that had people working from home are back to full office now. They want their offices updated. We did a project for J&J to spruce up their offices.

Q: Hasn’t biotech construction slowed, since the gene therapy bubble bust?

A: The WuXi AppTec Pharmaceuticals project Whiting-Turner is building (a 1.7-million-square-foot factory complex in Middletown, Delaware) is going full speed again.

Q: Any problem finding skilled labor?

A: There is a labor shortage for construction. We don’t have enough blue-collar workers coming into the trades, to replenish the folks leaving the trades. Getting the younger generation interested in construction, architecture, engineering, working with tools, we face that, to get more people. This needs to be addressed.

Q: In some places in the United States we see U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pulling workers off jobs and deporting them. If we have a construction labor shortage, why not enroll them as apprentices?

A: I’m not going to comment on that.

Q: Will machines take over significant construction work soon enough to make a difference in projects now on the drawing boards?

A: Construction has always been a lagging participant in technology. Adapting new technologies to prefabricate off-site in a warehouse and ship it to the job site is one way to address the problem.

More than 10 years ago we did prefabrication for Nemours children’s hospital at a temporary warehouse in New Castle, Delaware. Since then it has advanced significantly.

Craig Melograno, president of PDM Constructors and Durapods, has really addressed this. They did projects with us at Virtua, and at Penn’s Pavilion. They are cranking out prefab pieces five to seven days a week, from their permanent facility in Montgomery County. When you can prefabricate patient rooms, restrooms, mass production, you can really find efficiencies.

We love to do prefabricated facades. We did Inspira’s Mullica Hill facility at (N.J.) 55 and (U.S.) 322 recently. We hired Jersey Panel to put up pre-fabricated exterior panels to eliminate the need for field-installed stud metal framing.

AutoCAD and (Chester County-based) Bentley Systems (construction software platforms) have really taken off. We use AutoCAD software; it helps our folks in the field get work done on their laptop or by phone.

Q: Does automation help coordinate work at a client’s multiple sites?

A: At Mastery Charter Schools we do everything from teaching labs to gymnasiums. We make our plan, then when school is out in June we’re off to the races, and button it up by August for the new school year.

Q: Do you do that for public school districts, too?

A: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania contracting system is not the greatest, from our point of view.

(At private companies and schools) as a general contractor we are hired by the owner; we hire the mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors; and we are responsible for the budget and the schedule.

But at public schools and other state projects, each contractor reports directly to the state. We would have no contractual ties to (the trades firms doing the work.) We don’t want to work that way. We want to control our destiny.

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