As a World War II and Korean War veteran who attended USC’s School of Architecture on the GI Bill, Robert Kennard founded The Kennard Design Group in 1957. The firm, which provided architecture and planning services, became one of the largest and oldest African-American architectural firms in Los Angeles.
The Kennard Development Group, dba KDG Construction Consulting (KDG), a derivative of the Kennard Design Group, was established by Mr. Kennard’s daughter, Lydia Kennard, in 1980 and incorporated in 1984. The firm began as a developer of mid & low rise office buildings, providing project development throughout the greater Los Angeles area. In the mid-1980s, KDG sold its office building portfolio and converted its expertise in development and construction management into a fee-for-service professional practice.
Today, KDG is a successful construction management services firm, certified by the State of California as a Small Business (SB) with a staff of exceptional project and construction management professionals. Over the past five years, KDG has coordinated and managed the construction of more than $2 billion in public works and capital improvement projects.
KDG’s staff includes civil, mechanical and electrical engineers and business-degreed professionals serving as construction managers, inspectors, estimators, and/or project control engineers. Averaging over 18 years of experience, KDG’s dedicated professionals ensure that projects are successfully executed, providing competent, responsive and well-coordinated services. Because KDG’s senior professionals actively participate in and supervise every project, the firm is able to maintain exceptionally high quality work products.
Our Mission
KDG Construction Consulting strives to be acknowledged by its clients, employees, and peers for its innovation, integrity and ability to both lead and support a broad array of construction and program management services across a wide range of public, institutional and private projects.
Our Values
In construction and program management, results matter. As a baseline goal, we focus on ensuring that projects are completed on time and on budget. However, our value proposition is to deliver our clients results that exceed these threshold expectations by striving to deliver projects under budget and ahead of schedule. We achieve these exceptional results by leveraging the knowledge, creativity, work ethic and passion of our employees to add value throughout everything we do.
KDG offers a comprehensive suite of services – from project initiation, planning, and construction through closeout and claims support – each of our services is targeted to meet the specific needs of our clients.
Three key factors differentiate KDG in the construction management and program management field.
- KDG is a tightly-focused firm – KDG focuses exclusively on construction and program management and solely operates only in specific industry sectors (utilities, aviation and affordable housing), where we have developed an in-depth level of expertise.
- KDG delivers deep technical expertise to clients in key industry sectors – KDG employs the top talent in the industry and leverages their collective experience to deliver superior results to our clients. As a result of delivering exceptional people, KDG has enjoyed strong repeat business from our clients.
- KDG provides an exceptional level of personal service – KDG takes a very hands-on approach to each project. Our principals and senior staff work closely with each client and are actively involved in each project.
KDG is a certified Minority and Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) and a certified Small Business Enterprise (SBE) with the State of California.
