A seven-hour drive up California's spine is long enough to remember what most of construction forgets. Projects do not only test budgets and schedules. They test relationships. They expose ego. They reveal whether a team can disagree without leaving the call angry.
David Renard was talking from the road between Los Angeles and San Francisco when he described what his firm, RPM, actually does. Architecture and engineering, yes. Program management, often. But the word he reaches for is simpler and more telling: fixers.
In an industry that can reward inertia, RPM has built its reputation on arriving when something has already gone sideways. The original architect cannot untangle a constraint. A project is over budget. The original engineer cannot get the job back on track. A contractor in the field has built first and checked the drawings later. "Some contractors in the field get into a groove and forget to double check details reverting to what they're used to" Renard said, likening it to assembling IKEA furniture out of order and realizing too late that the whole thing must be taken apart.
RPM's work begins there, inside the jam. Not with grumbling, not with posturing, but with a fresh-eyed assessment and a willingness to reframe the problem. Renard describes it as an "unbiased perspective," paired with an attitude the firm has turned into a calling card: challenges are not treated like burdens. They are treated like puzzles worth solving.
The RPM Method: Architecture, Engineering, Program Management
Renard is careful about what RPM is and is not. "We do architecture, engineering and program management," he said. In practice, that means three distinct modes of value.
On one end, RPM designs fast-paced projects: buildings that need to be designed quickly, built quickly, or both. The strategy is not magical thinking. It is a deliberate shift toward modular and pre-engineered building products that compress timelines and reduce uncertainty. Building components manufactured offsite in controlled settings are typically more predictable. Predictability, in construction, is another word for financial control.
On the engineering side, the firm is frequently pulled into time-sensitive gaps that appear mid-build: deferred submittals that the primary team did not handle. Renard's partner, Ben Bronow, described the reality bluntly: these items can be missed until construction, then suddenly become a critical path. RPM steps in with quick solutions to keep work moving.
Then there is program management, where RPM becomes "the captains of the project," as Renard put it: developing concepts, estimating costs, staying on as an owner's representative to keep budgets from drifting. The part he returns to, repeatedly, is the compounding effect of markups embedded in traditional procurement. Renard's argument is not anti-contractor. It is pro-discipline. If a project's purpose is public good, or its funding is fragile, unnecessary layers of markup can make the difference between breaking ground and being canceled.
Fast Construction's Most Persistent Myth
Ask leaders what they assume about speed and many will give the same answer: faster means more expensive. Renard has heard it often enough to treat it as the default misconception.
Bronow acknowledged the nuance: historically, there were tradeoffs, and some cases still exist where speed carries premiums. But he rejects the idea that it is a rule. With the right approach, modular and manufactured systems can cut change orders and field surprises by shifting complexity earlier, where it can be controlled. Pair that with the right manufacturers, and the math can bend in the other direction.
For Renard, the deeper misconception is not cost. It is the belief that timelines are immovable. He describes an operating posture built around refusing to accept "status quo" answers simply because they are common. If a permit office says eight weeks, he does not shrug. "I will call them every day," he said. "I'll kill them with kindness." The point is not harassment. The point is ownership: relentlessly identifying what can be influenced, and then influencing it.
The Work That Changed His Definition of Impact
RPM's mission work did not originate as branding. Renard traces it to his father, the firm's CEO, who "walked away from the manufacturing industry" about 30 years ago to focus on feeding-the-homeless programs on California's Central Coast. Renard admits he didn't understand the choice in his twenties. It felt ill-advised.
Then his own career delivered a turning point: he became a project manager on one of San Francisco's first navigation centers, a shelter model that the city later expanded. After it opened, he returned to check on operations and met residents who recognized him as someone who helped build the facility. They told him the design changed their lives. They avoided other shelters because they felt unsafe; this one felt different. It was well designed, they said, and it gave them space to heal.
That conversation hardened into a conviction: a built environment can change outcomes, even for people society has written off. Renard described it as a shift in belief that lives can change "no matter what kind of trauma or addiction or mental health" someone has endured. He went back to his father and told him, simply, "I get it."
Cutting the Budget Without Cutting the Dignity
What followed was not a philanthropic pivot. It was a technical response to a moral problem.
Renard saw cities pricing shelter projects as if public urgency were "free money." Contractors would gouge. Budgets would inflate. Projects would be reduced or canceled. With experience in pre-engineered buildings and modular construction, he believed the same programs could be delivered for dramatically less by changing the construction method.
He began calling cities that were about to cancel and introducing the idea. He says RPM saved three projects that way, creating a proof-of-concept that eventually became a business. Since then, he says, RPM's team has designed, developed, and permitted 34 homeless shelter facilities across the country.
The work evolved beyond speed. Renard described adopting architects with deep experience in trauma-informed design, integrating principles meant to evoke healing and hope. The proof, for him, arrived in the smallest details: residents noticed curved walkways and other features RPM debated in design meetings. They could articulate what felt welcoming. They could tell the difference.
Yet Renard draws a bright ethical line. RPM does not want to be part of what he calls the "industrial homeless complex." The firm, he argues, does not survive on shelter projects. It survives on private enterprise, government, military work, and other construction sectors. Shelter work is where RPM applies talent while lowering fees because it refuses to become a barrier. In that space, Renard said, RPM often charges about "50% less" than typical architecture and engineering market rates.
Risk Appetite, Common Sense, and Code Nerds
Renard's diversification is strategic, but it is also cultural. "You go where you're invited and you stay where you are welcomed," he said. The invitation often arrives because RPM will take on accelerated schedules others refuse. He told a story about a nuclear project in New Mexico: initially told there was no design contract for them, he replied that they weren't chasing one, because they "know nothing about" designing nuclear facilities. Three months later, the facility called back. No firm would accept the schedule. Would RPM?
They took it, but on terms Renard insists are non-negotiable: clarity about what the firm does and does not know, then disciplined execution of what it does.
That discipline also shows up in RPM's approach to code. Renard does not romanticize regulation; he respects it enough to study it. He talks about "code exceptions, exemptions and interpretation" to benefit clients, and he wants reviewers comfortable not only with what is allowed, but with how it works. He calls his people "code nerds," and he values them because approvals are, in his words, an "interpretation savvy world."
Why the Relationship Matters as Much as the Deliverable
Late in the conversation, Renard returned to the theme that ties his technical work to his leadership style: construction is not a transaction. It is a long relationship. Projects can run one to two years with weekly calls. Clients should choose a team they can argue with and still respect.
RPM, he suggests, is built for that reality. The firm likes changing its mind. It likes adopting client ideas. It enjoys being outsmarted and saying so. That posture is not softness. It is a method for moving faster without breaking trust.
In a sector racing toward automation, Renard's view of the near future is grounded and unexpectedly optimistic. Construction, he believes, will remain human for a long time, and that is exactly why safety will continue to become more central. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, ironworkers - the work will still demand people, ingenuity, and coordination. If speed is to become standard, it will have to be earned through smarter systems, safer sites, and more honest collaboration.
RPM's wager is that the best version of fast construction is not frantic. It is disciplined. It is technically literate. It is emotionally intelligent. And, in the places where the stakes are highest, it is humane.
