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Metro East Home Construction Costs Explained in HelloNation Featuring Home Building Expert Matt Lanter

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The article outlines how site conditions, materials, and design choices shape the total cost of building a home.

SHILOH, Ill., June 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — What does it really cost to build a home in the Metro East? A HelloNation article explores this question by examining the factors that affect every homeowner’s building budget, from site conditions to design upgrades. The article, featuring insights from Fulford Homes, LLC, provides a clear explanation of how both predictable and variable expenses shape home construction costs in the region. Readers can find the whole piece in a HelloNation article.

According to the feature, most construction projects start with a base price, which reflects the cost of the home itself on a standard lot with basic finishes. However, that figure is just the beginning of the construction budget. The total project cost depends heavily on site preparation, materials, labor, and the homeowner’s chosen upgrades. As the article notes, understanding each of these parts helps prevent costly surprises later.

One of the most significant factors in the cost of building a new home in the Metro East is the land itself. Site conditions such as uneven ground, poor drainage, or clay soil can add high costs before the first wall goes up. In areas around Shiloh, IL, Belleville, and O’Fallon, for instance, special footings or water management systems are often required to stabilize the foundation. Builders like Fulford Homes emphasize the importance of evaluating these factors early to create an accurate building budget.

Site prep is another crucial but often overlooked component of home construction costs. Clearing trees, grading slopes, and installing retaining walls are not glamorous tasks, but they are vital to ensuring a strong foundation. These steps also enhance the property’s long-term real estate value by protecting it from drainage issues and future structural problems. Proper site preparation provides a stable platform for the rest of the construction project and ensures that utilities and drainage systems perform as intended.

The article explains that beyond physical site work, homeowners must plan for permitting and local fees. Each municipality in the Metro East region sets different rates for sewer connections, water taps, and inspections. These administrative steps can add thousands of dollars to the project cost before any materials are ordered. Experienced builders such as Fulford Homes include these figures in their early estimates to help clients understand the full cost of building from the beginning.

After site preparation is complete, the following key components are materials and labor. The article notes that these two factors often fluctuate with market demand, supply chain changes, and seasonal factors. Lumber, roofing, and concrete are particularly sensitive to these shifts. A well-managed construction budget accounts for these variables, allowing builders to adjust to pricing changes while maintaining transparency. For Fulford Homes, keeping clients informed about material trends helps protect them from sudden cost increases.

Homeowners’ personal choices also strongly influence the final average cost to build. Interior elements like flooring, cabinetry, and countertops can vary widely in price. A standard package may meet the basic requirements, but most people invest in design upgrades, such as quartz countertops, hardwood floors, or specialty lighting. These selections personalize a home but also raise the total home construction cost. Balancing these upgrades within the building budget allows homeowners to achieve their vision without overspending.

The feature also discusses additional considerations, such as basements and energy efficiency. Finishing a basement adds usable square footage, which increases both comfort and project cost. Similarly, investing in high-efficiency HVAC systems or windows adds to the upfront cost of building but may reduce long-term utility expenses. Fulford Homes encourages clients in Shiloh, IL, and across the Metro East to evaluate these options based on lifestyle and return on investment rather than short-term savings.

To truly understand the average cost to build, homeowners need a clear breakdown of each expense category. The HelloNation article highlights that organized estimates that break down costs by stage foundation, framing, interior, and exterior give buyers an accurate sense of where their money goes. Without this clarity, comparing different builders or home plans can be misleading. A detailed construction budget helps identify realistic expectations and avoids misunderstandings during the process.

Another critical factor discussed is the relationship between square footage and overall pricing. Larger homes tend to have lower costs per square foot, since fixed fees like permits and site prep spread across more space. However, complex designs or premium materials can offset those savings. The article advises that the best approach is to base calculations on local conditions and finalized plans rather than on national averages. This localized perspective ensures the building budget reflects the actual home construction costs in the Metro East area.

Finally, the article reminds readers that the real estate value of a completed home often includes exterior and landscape features not reflected in the base price. Driveways, patios, and lawns add both curb appeal and expense. Many homeowners choose to complete these improvements after the main construction to manage cash flow better. Factoring these elements into the full project cost gives a complete picture of the home’s finished value and helps prevent underestimating total expenses.

By outlining all these variables, the HelloNation article shows that transparency and communication are key when planning a new build in Shiloh, IL, or anywhere in the Metro East. Understanding materials and labor, site preparation, and design decisions in advance helps families make confident choices and enjoy a smoother process from start to finish. Builders like Fulford Homes demonstrate that accurate budgeting begins with clarity and honest assessment, not guesswork.

Metro East Home Construction Costs: What Every Buyer Should Know features insights from Matt Lanter, Home Building Expert of Shiloh, IL, in HelloNation.

About HelloNation

HelloNation is America’s Good News Network, a premier media platform built on the idea that good news travels faster when real people tell real stories. Through its community-focused digital publications and innovative “edvertising” approach, HelloNation delivers expert-driven, good-news content that informs, inspires, and spotlights the leaders making a meaningful impact in their communities. HelloNation maintains partnerships with the National Governors Association, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the United States First Responders Association.

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SOURCE HelloNation

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Summation Makes AI Analysts Available to Every Business Team

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Put a proactive AI analyst to work in minutes: automating the grind, staying on top of what’s changing, and helping teams make better decisions, fast.

BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AI has made individuals dramatically more capable. But making each person smarter doesn’t automatically make the company run better.

Companies are becoming more complicated. There’s too much happening for any person or team to see the full picture. Summation is AI designed for how a business actually operates.

Starting today, Summation’s AI analyst is available to everyone. After a year deploying Summation inside companies including Fanatics, Lineage, and Grid, any team can now sign up, connect its data, and put an AI analyst to work in minutes.

“Most businesses aren’t short on valuable problems to solve. They’re short on the analytical capacity to solve them,” said Ian Wong, CEO and Co-Founder of Summation. “We built Summation to put an AI analyst on every team and bring the best of AI to the decisions that drive the business.”

The AI Analyst That Stays on Top of the Business
Most AI tools wait for someone to ask the right question. Summation can take responsibility for work that needs to happen whether someone remembers to ask or not.

It can run recurring analytical processes, including reviews, forecasts, and reporting, automatically on your schedule.

Summation can monitor thousands of changes across products, customers, locations, and channels. When something matters, Summation investigates why, shows the evidence, and brings it to the right person.

And it can go beyond analysis into operating decisions. Summation powers applications for planning, pricing, inventory, marketing, and other workflows, helping teams make key decisions and measure what matters.

The result is more capacity to run the business: more questions answered, faster response to change, and better decisions made sooner.

More Than a General-Purpose LLM
Making that work takes more than a great AI model.

Summation learns the context that makes each business different: its data, metrics, definitions, processes, and constraints. Its workflows keep running from one operating cycle to the next, and its work is verified and traceable back to underlying data.

That’s what allows Summation to take responsibility for recurring work rather than simply generate a one-off answer. An output from Summation is a boardroom ready deliverable you can trust.

From Sign-Up to Production
Individuals and teams can sign up, connect their data through more than 1,200 integrations, and delegate their first job in minutes. With Summation Workflows, useful work can then run automatically and deliver itself by email or Slack.

For enterprises, Summation’s deployment team works alongside customers to make the analyst successful. The team identifies high-value responsibilities to delegate, learns how the business actually operates, and does the last-mile work to put AI into production.

The goal isn’t another AI implementation. It’s a working analyst driving a real business outcome.

Available Today
Summation is available in two self-serve plans: Pro at $60 per user per month and Max at $200 per user per month.

Enterprise plans include dedicated deployment support, custom integrations, and advanced governance and controls for organizations putting AI analysts into critical operating workflows.

Summation AI analysts are available today. Put one to work at: www.summation.com/try-summation.

About Summation
Summation builds AI analysts that help companies understand what’s happening, plan what comes next, and make better operating decisions. Its AI analysts work from live business data and shared company context to automate recurring work, proactively monitor performance, investigate problems, and improve plans.

Companies including Fanatics, Lineage, and Grid run recurring analytical and planning work on Summation today.

Summation is backed by Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington.

Media Contact
Trevor Shih
Head of Business Operations
Summation
press@summation.com

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SOURCE Summation Technologies, Inc.

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New North American Survey Reveals Only One in Ten Sustainability Professionals Expect Their Organization’s Ambition to Decrease

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Research from UN Global Compact Networks in Canada, Mexico, and the USA and GlobeScan reveals companies are becoming more selective and strategic as pressure on corporate sustainability commitments grows

TORONTO, Sept. 10, 2026 /CNW/ — Despite mounting economic, political and regulatory pressure on corporate sustainability, ambition among sustainability professionals across North America is proving more resilient than widely assumed. A new tri-national study finds that only 10 percent of respondents expect their organization’s sustainability ambition to decrease, while most expect it to increase, remain stable, or become more targeted.

Leading Through Uncertainty: The Evolving Role of Sustainability Professionals in North America, published by UN Global Compact Networks in Canada, Mexico and the USA, in partnership with GlobeScan, draws on survey responses from corporate sustainability professionals across all three countries, conducted in English, French and Spanish. The research finds that sustainability leadership in North America is evolving, with organizations becoming more selective in where they focus, how they communicate, and demonstrate progress. Other key findings include:

Business value is the defining test for sustainability leadership. 76 percent of respondents identify the ability to connect sustainability to business value as a crucial capability, meaning that industry leaders are expected to translate environmental and social priorities into strategy, operations, and finance.Sustainability is moving closer to core business strategy. 61 percent of respondents say embedding sustainability into strategy and capital allocation should be a priority for sustainability leaders, pointing to a shift toward deeper business integration.The role of sustainability professionals is expanding. Beyond technical expertise, the research also surfaces the growing importance of influencing leadership, working across functions and driving organizational change.

The research is based on a survey of 276 sustainability professionals with responsibility and expertise in corporate sustainability across North America. Conducted in English, French and Spanish, the results are weighted equally across Canada, Mexico and the USA. The full findings were presented at the virtual launch event on September 10, 2026. The complete report is now available to download here.

About UN Global Compact
As a special initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN Global Compact is a call to companies worldwide to align their operations and strategies with Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Our vision is clear: to mobilize business to transform sustainability ambition into action at the scale the world demands. With more than 25,000 participants and a presence in over 100 countries through 5 Regional Hubs and more than 70 Country Networks and expansion territories, the UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.

For more information, follow @globalcompact on social media and visit our websites at unglobalcompact.org  | UN Global Compact Network Canada – unglobalcompact.ca | UN Global Compact Network Mexico – pactoglobal.org.mx  | UN Global Compact Network USA – globalcompactusa.org

About GlobeScan
GlobeScan is an insights and advisory firm specializing in trust, sustainability, and engagement. 
We equip clients with insights to navigate shifting societal and stakeholder expectations, crafting evidence-based strategies that reduce risks and create value for their organizations and society.
Established in 1987, we have offices in Cape Town, Dubai, Hong Kong, Hyderabad, London, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, and Toronto. GlobeScan is a participant of the UN Global Compact and a Certified B Corporation.
Learn more here.

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SOURCE United Nations Global Compact

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OpenSpace Unveils the Next Generation of Its Visual Intelligence Platform at Waypoint 2026

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New Spatial AI, mobile, and progress tracking innovations help construction teams turn trusted reality data into faster, better decisions

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — OpenSpace, the Visual Intelligence Platform for the built world, today unveiled the next generation of its platform at Waypoint 2026, the company’s annual virtual customer event. The new and upcoming capabilities demonstrate how Visual Intelligence is creating a new way to work in construction, moving project teams beyond document-centric workflows toward decisions grounded in visual, real-world data.

In recent years, OpenSpace has become a leading platform that brings together data from 360° cameras, smartphones, drones, laser scanners, BIM models, project schedules and more. OpenSpace enriches that data with location, field context and reality-based progress analytics, making it easier for project teams to coordinate around what is actually happening on-site, communicate across stakeholders, and make faster decisions. This new way of working, with visual reality at the center, is making life easier for field teams, delivering literal ROI, and making AI genuinely more useful for builders.

“Construction doesn’t need another disconnected tool or system that asks teams to manually input information into a form,” said Jeevan Kalanithi, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSpace. “The next phase of the industry will be defined by platforms that understand the physical world and make that intelligence available wherever teams already work. Today at Waypoint, we demonstrated how OpenSpace is powering a new way of reality-based work, with an open platform that interoperates with the systems and technologies that work best for our customers’ businesses.”

A New Way to Work in the Field
At Waypoint 2026, OpenSpace previewed new capabilities designed to make the smartphone a powerful tool for capturing, understanding, and acting on jobsite reality, reducing administrative work and helping teams move more quickly from observation to action.

The company announced a breakthrough in its Autolocation technology, revealing AI Autolocation 2.0 with Live Location. In construction, location of a photo taken is often the most important, but almost always missing, piece of information. OpenSpace made this a priority to solve for their customers. AI Autolocation works like GPS, but inside buildings where GPS does not operate, and it works without the need to install wireless hardware devices like bluetooth beacons. AI Autolocation 1.0 helped users automatically pin issues created on mobile to their location on a drawing. AI Autolocation 2.0 takes it further, allowing users to understand their position in real time, all the time, powering entirely new field workflows.

The technology powers a new mobile experience called Site Mode, which puts a user’s live location directly on project drawings and BIM models, even when offline, allowing users in the field to instantly access relevant information, open Field Notes and expedite issue workflows based on exactly where they are on the jobsite.

The technology also powers AI Walk-and-Talk, a capability that allows users to create structured updates by speaking naturally as they move through the jobsite. The images and voice are tagged in real time to jobsite locations, providing a rich data set of site status. Walk-and-Talk powers workflows such as daily reports, with OpenSpace compiling the information into an end-of-day report to reduce significant time spent on administrative work.

Verified Progress, Not Opinions
OpenSpace also showcased major advancements to OpenSpace Track, its reality-based progress-tracking solution for projects ranging from multifamily housing to hospitality projects to some of the most complex, high-value and mission-critical projects. OpenSpace Track helps customers verify installed work, compare actual progress with planned milestones, identify schedule risks, forecast future performance, and view trends across multiple projects at the portfolio level.

Due to high customer demand from mission-critical owners and builders, OpenSpace has expanded its progress tracking offerings with new functionality for quantity tracking, markups and predictive analytics. Combined with the power of the full OpenSpace platform as well as optional walk and pilot services, customers are using these capabilities to build faster and more reliably, with visual reality at the center.

The company also announced its Track API, which allows customers to pull progress tracking data into whatever core system a customer uses — ERP, BI dashboards, or PM tools — and drive more workflows in both the field and office. In particular, the company highlighted customers using Track and the Track API to provide accelerated payments to their subcontractors using a shared visual record that all parties can trust, demonstrating literal ROI impact for the industry as a whole.

“For the construction industry, the field is where money is made or lost, yet progress has traditionally been measured through manual updates, periodic observations, and individual judgment,” said Michael Jones, Vice President of Product Management at OpenSpace. “Visual Intelligence replaces opinions with a more objective, timely view of what has actually been completed, which can truly transform the difficult economics of construction. It allows payments and capital to flow more efficiently from lenders to owners to GCs to trades, each and every month.”

Giving AI Agents Eyes on the Jobsite
OpenSpace outlined the next generation of AI built for the “real world” economy. Most AI systems are designed to interpret documents and text. Construction, however, takes place in a physical environment that changes every minute, every day. To provide meaningful value, AI must understand not only what was planned, but also what is truly happening in the real, physical world. This type of AI is often labeled “Physical AI,” and it represents the cutting edge of AI broadly.

OpenSpace announced the new OpenSpace Agent Ecosystem – an open, interoperable AI agent platform that understands what is happening on the jobsite, and can tackle work that teams have to do. OpenSpace leverages its foundation of processing large amounts of visual data, enriching it with location, meaning and high-level analytics, and is now making that intelligence accessible to AI agents to help tackle real work. OpenSpace is building agentic AI technology capable of understanding reality data that is captured, organized, and mapped to the correct project spatial context. Having analyzed imagery from more than 110,000 construction projects representing over 77 billion square feet, with more than 500 million expert-verified labels and descriptions, OpenSpace has built a foundation of real-world visual and spatial intelligence that can help AI understand how construction actually progresses.

This foundation can enable AI agents – in OpenSpace or in a partner system using OpenSpace via MCP – to assist with everyday workflows like daily logs, routine inspections, and clearing punch lists. OpenSpace is already putting this vision into practice, working with a select group of Early Access customers to build and deploy AI agents against real-world construction workflows.

“AI agents need eyes,” said Michael Fleischman, CTO and Co-Founder, OpenSpace. “An agent may be able to read every report associated with a project, and that provides real value. But without visual and spatial context, AI still cannot fully understand the scope of what drives business results for our customers – that data lies in the field. OpenSpace is building that connection between AI and the physical world so agents can become genuinely useful partners to the people delivering projects. This kind of real-world reasoning has been the vision behind OpenSpace from the beginning, and we’re excited to now put that capability in the hands of our customers.”

Throughout Waypoint 2026, OpenSpace customers shared how they are using Visual Intelligence to improve coordination, reduce administrative work, validate progress, deliver literal ROI through accelerated payments, and make faster decisions.

“OpenSpace puts Autodesk Issues front and center with pinpoint accuracy so we can get them resolved faster. The faster we resolve issues, the greater benefit to the project,” said Zeeshan Haider, Director of Business Process, ISEC, Inc. “I worked with one company that could measure job profitability based on the number of days issues stayed open. So, if we can increase the efficiency with which we resolve open issues, that means money to the bottom line. And at the end of the day, that satisfies our customers. They feel like we’re on top of things and getting them done faster.”

Additional information about upcoming feature availability, participation in Early Access and Beta programs, and general customer access will be shared in the coming months.

To watch Waypoint 2026 and learn more about the innovations announced at the event, visit https://www.openspace.ai/waypoint/.

About OpenSpace
OpenSpace is the Visual Intelligence Platform for the built world, helping teams reduce risk and increase efficiency. Powered by Spatial AI, its image-first platform streamlines coordination between field and office teams, providing reality-based, real-time intelligence for faster decisions and fewer delays. Customers like Suffolk, Comfort Systems, and Tishman Speyer rely on OpenSpace to gain critical insights from their sites, avoid destructive investigations, and finish projects ahead of schedule. To date, general contractors, trades, and owners have relied on OpenSpace to analyze imagery on more than 110,000 construction projects across 132 countries. To learn more, visit www.openspace.ai and follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:
Lindsay Hull
Zer0 to 5ive for OpenSpace
openspace@0to5.com
or
media@openspace.ai

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SOURCE OpenSpace

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