Get smart: Building contractor pushes engineering envelope

National building contractor Suffolk, headquartered in Boston, has brought an innovative Smart Lab project management facility to its office in downtown Tampa’s Channel District.

The privately held, $2.9 billion company debuted the Smart Lab concept last year at offices in San Francisco and New York City. Essentially, a Smart Lab is a meeting room equipped with enormous flat-screen monitors on all sides, plus an electronic white board and a virtual reality “cave” Suffolk staff and clients can use to fully model and explore a building project before ground is even broken.