Group PMX: Leading the Virtual Revolution

Co-Founder Farid Cardozo has played key PM/CM roles on an extensive range of institutional and public works projects for hospitals, colleges and universities, research and development facilities, airports, government buildings, highways, and environmental initiatives. He has over 20 years of experience in various aspects of pre-construction, design, construction, and program and project management, with a strong background in planning, scheduling and project controls. Mr. Cardozo is a CMAA-Certified Construction Manager (CCM).

Career Highlights: Mr. Cardozo has built a reputation as an expert in managing the complexities of patient care and research facilities, including such first-of-their-kind facilities in New York City as the Irving Cancer Research Center for Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Over the course of his 40-year career, Mr. Giaramita has worked on virtually every type of project and large program including hospitals, college and universities, research and development facilities, airports, transit, highways, bridges, environmental, petrochemical, natural gas, pipelines, MEP infrastructure, and corporate and governmental buildings. He is regarded as a take-charge leader in the fields of program/project/construction management, design management, program controls, and general construction on large and complex projects. Mr. Giaramita specializes in turning around troubled projects (e.g., contentious teams, behind-schedule, over-budget), succeeding where others have not.

Career Highlights: Mr. Giaramita developed Group PMX’s innovative CM Neutral SM approach to managing and balancing the conflicting relationships commonly found on construction projects. He has also authored several articles on program management and change orders, and successfully saved clients millions of dollars by applying his exceptional management and technical skills. He is regarded as an industry expert in negotiation, planning and scheduling, cost control, overall program controls, and project and team organization. His accomplishments on the Southwest Freeway Reconstruction Program in Texas won him industry recognition, featured in Engineering News Record.

As Managing Director – Buildings, Jenny Freeman is responsible for leading the growth and technical direction of the firm’s market comprising the healthcare, life sciences, higher ed, cultural, corporate/commercial, and government sectors. Possessing more than 30 years of professional experience, she is known throughout the industry as a builder with expertise in pre-construction, planning, and construction of major overbuild, modernization, renovation, and ground-up new construction projects. In recent years, her work has primarily been concentrated in the healthcare sector, where she has led more than 60 projects for many of the NY area and the nation’s premier healthcare organizations, including Northwell Health, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, NYU Langone Health, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the Mount Sinai Health System. Ms. Freeman is an active industry leader and serves on the Board of Professional Women in Construction.

Ms. Aggarwal is a senior human resources professional with 14 years of human capital management experience in an increasingly diverse global workforce. As the firm’s HR business partner, she uses her extensive background in recruitment, compensation, and benefits, employee engagement and grievances, and employment policies and procedures to secure the best candidates available in New York’s hyper-competitive A/E/C industry. After employees are brought on board, she works to smooth their transition by introducing them to Group PMX’s employment policies and procedures, benefits packages, and training and development programs. Her background also includes extensive knowledge of employment and immigration law, program and event management, designing performance appraisal and career development programs, payroll administration, and HRIS implementation. Before joining the firm, she served as an HR manager in New York for a leading financial technology firm for over 10 years. In her past experience, she also established a campus recruitment/engagement program; designed corporate social responsibility programs; created employee manuals; and worked with legal counsel to expedite immigration and visa-related activities. In addition to her certificate in human capital management from New York University, Ms. Agggarwal also holds a master’s degree and two bachelor’s degrees.

Chief Marketing Officer Cara Lang is a marketing executive with more than 18 years of experience focused on strategic marketing planning and implementation. She excels at partnering with leadership and teams, driving proactive planning and execution, enhancing objective focus, and discovering efficiencies in high-yield activities. Ms. Lang has a client-centric mindset and vast B2B market sector experience in a variety of industries, including engineering, architecture, construction, technology, industrial, federal, power, and infrastructure. She implements critical path project management approaches to business planning, market prepositioning, persuasive content development, optimal brand visibility, and communication channels.

Mr. Kimura serves as the firm’s director for life sciences and healthcare. In this role, he is able to leverage his program management and senior executive oversight expertise to improve the healthcare delivery process for patients throughout the New York metropolitan area. A licensed professional engineer and certified construction manager, he is using his project leadership background to upgrade and improve numerous New York City public hospitals and senior care facilities that suffered extensive damage during Hurricane Sandy. During this $1.7 billion effort, which includes making the facilities more resilient against future flooding, Mr. Kimura oversees teams of program managers handling all project phases from planning and design through construction and project closeout. His responsibilities include developing and tracking master budgets and schedules and advising clients on how to best manage and minimize their risk exposure. On Long Island, for one of the largest healthcare networks in the region, he served as owner’s representative or project manager during the extensive expansion and renovation of medical office and treatment suites, academic and research buildings, training centers, and parking lots and other support facilities.

Mr. Kimura excels at resolving complex field issues, meeting or exceeding challenging budget and schedule requirements, and quickly resolving issues among key project stakeholders, including clients, architects and engineers, construction managers, and trades. Earlier in his career, he also served as the project director or resident engineer during numerous assignments to improve drainage infrastructure, parks, and highways and roadways throughout Queens and Long Island.

Ms. Somai, Group PMX’s controller, has more than 15 years of experience providing detail-oriented financial management services to address often complex accounting challenges. Her responsibilities include communicating an array of financial information and recommendations to key stakeholders while also achieving cost savings, safeguarding corporate assets, and successfully achieving the firm’s strategic and operational planning goals. Ms. Somai’s duties also include preparing journal entries for expense reimbursement; reconciling bank and credit statements for senior management; balancing general ledger accounts; and preparing reports summarizing monthly revenue and profit and loss statements. She oversees client billing, including monitoring timesheets and creating invoices; prepares collection reports; and promptly applies payments to client accounts. Ms. Somai uses her academic background in computer information systems to maintain the firm’s timesheet system, set up new tasks, and update employee cost and project billable rates. Earlier in her tenure, she also oversaw a range of HR responsibilities, including communicating employee benefits, verifying employee documentation and preparing new hire orientation packages, maintaining personnel files, and handling payroll, PTO, 401k, COBRA, and other issues. Ms. Somai holds a bachelor’s of business administration from Baruch College.

Mr. Cardozo has 10 years of experience in various aspects of design, pre-construction and construction, and project management. His professional expertise includes providing program management services for software integration, project controls, and scheduling initiatives for a wide variety of clients in several market sectors, including healthcare, higher education, and multi-family residential. Mr. Cardozo has served as the integration or implementation manager for several Unifier and Skire-based project management platforms that provide for the efficient management of complex multimillion-dollar capital projects at hospitals and universities throughout the New York City metropolitan region. His duties during these projects frequently involved performing a gap analysis that involved reviewing existing workflows and business processes; working with internal client staff to ensure proper system build-out; and providing extensive reporting capabilities to allow clients to closely track budgets and schedules.

Ms. Gallo, the firm’s marketing director for brand and growth, is a senior executive possessing extensive stakeholder, client, and business relationship management experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. In addition to her results-oriented interpersonal communication and collaborative leadership skills, her areas of expertise include external affairs, project management and program development, fundraising, and event planning. A lawyer by training and a member of the New York State bar, Ms. Gallo’s expertise also includes legal compliance, public affairs, and advocacy. For Group PMX, she oversees a range of activities designed to grow the business by building the firm’s reputation, client base, and service lines within an extremely competitive A/E/C environment. To accomplish this, Ms. Gallo works with senior management to produce successful proposal submittals to provide professional services during some of the largest building and infrastructure projects undertaken in the New York region in decades. In her branding and growth role, she also works to streamline the production of new marketing materials, implement quality-oriented policies and procedures to streamline editorial production, and facilitates a highly collaborative work environment to accommodate extremely demanding deadlines while also building positive relationships with the firm’s technical staff.

Dr. Sehic is a project controls manager and building information modeling (BIM) specialist with extensive experience performing project risk analysis, project planning, construction inspection, cost estimating, and scheduling during major aviation, transportation, transit and rail, higher education, healthcare, and commercial and residential development projects throughout the New York City area. During these complex, often multibillion-dollar public and private sector assignments, he uses his project controls and scheduling expertise to provide clients and other key decision-makers the information they need to meet and often exceed demanding schedule and budget requirements. Dr. Sehic prepares timely project progress and status reports, provides earned value analyses, and advises clients on how best to mitigate risk. He also has expertise in innovative construction technologies and design-build methodologies to streamline and improve overall project delivery. As a BIM specialist, Dr. Sehic has worked to implement and seamlessly integrate the use of BIM models into construction practices. He is also familiar with various project controls methodologies and has used them for various construction, scheduling, and cost estimating purposes.