MIAMI—Is Tampa or Fort Lauderdale the New Miami? That's the question we recently asked Jeffrey Gouveia, Suffolk Construction's president and general manager.

You can click here to read his answer. We followed up with another question: What do you expect for Miami?

"We still expect the Miami market to be strong, but people are watching closely, and the availability of land has certainly decreased," Gouveia says. "Some major projects are soon set to complete, but others such as MiamiCentral and Miami Worldcenter are still early in their progress, meaning labor remains in high demand.

That's a good take, but there's an X factor. Construction costs. Is there anything that can be done to help with construction costs?

As Gouveia sees it, developers who are now looking at projects in other markets are, in many cases, working with the same general contractors. That implies an established trust and performance reliability.

Suffolk, he says, has been able to keep construction costs down by implementing lean construction principles. The firm also taps what he calls "innovative tools" such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and laser scanning technologies.

"This has allowed us to assist our clients and deliver quality work in markets where they're just starting to build a presence," Gouveia says. "On a recent residential project in Bonita Springs, we were able to use the lean process of target value design to provide our client with a GMP that varied less than 1% from our initial conceptual estimate."

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Can Innovation Keep Construction Costs Down?

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