Percival Phillips was born in 1877. He began writing for newspapers at the age of sixteen with articles about coal miners rioting in Southwestern Pennsylvania. At the age of nineteen he began pursuing a dream of being a war correspondent with coverage of the Greco-Turkish war and later the war in Cuba. He next moved to London, England and worked for the Daily Express covering wars in Japan and Russia, Tripoli and the Balkans. Although an American the British government selected him to be one of five correspondents to cover the British portion of the Western Front during the World War I, as well as to cover the troubles in Ireland. After the war he was knighted by King George for these services. He next moved to the Daily Mail where he continued covering conflicts in Russia, China, and India, as well as problems in Iraq, the rise of Mussolini in Italy and Gandhi's activities in India. In 1935 he joined the Daily Telegraph and later covered a revolution in Greece and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. His final war was the Spanish Civil War during which he died in 1937.

As it currently operates, the commercial real estate construction industry is a disaster full of built-in waste. Seventy-percent of all projects end over budget and late. The buildingSMART Alliance estimates that up to fifty-percent of the process is consumed in waste. Almost every project includes massive hidden taxes in the form of delays, cost overruns, poor quality, and work that has to be redone. Building new structures is a fragmented, adversarial process that commonly results in dissatisfied customers and frequently ends in disappointment, bitterness, and even litigation.

The industry must change--for its own good and that of its customers. But while the industry has tried to reform itself, it can't do it alone. Real change can only come from business owners and executives who refuse to continue paying for a dysfunctional system and demand a new way of doing business.

"The Commercial Real Estate Revolution" is a bold manifesto for change from the Mindshift consortium--a group of top commercial real estate industry leaders who are fed up with a system that simply doesn't work. The book explains how business leaders can implement nine principles for any project that will dramatically cut costs, end delays, create better buildings, and force the industry into real reform.

"The Commercial Real Estate Revolution" offers a radically new way of doing business--a beginning-to-end, trust-based methodology that transforms the building process from top to bottom. Based on unifying principles and a common framework that meets the needs of "all" stakeholders, this new system can reform and remake commercial construction into an industry we're proud to be a part of.

If you're one of the millions of hardcore cynics who work in commercial construction, you probably think this sounds like pie in the sky. But this is no magic bullet; it's a call for real reform. If you're an industry professional who's sick of letting down clients or an owner who's sick of cost overruns and endless delays, "The Commercial Real Estate Revolution" offers a blueprint for fixing a broken industry.