Like many development projects in the pandemic, construction of the Applied Research Center at Florida Polytechnic University was burdened by delays. Skanska, the general contractor responsible for the building, struggled to find materials.But it wasn’t steel, glass or concrete that set back the completion of the 95,000-square-foot research facility in Lakeland, Fla. The problem was card readers.A global shortage of semiconductors had made security access systems impossible to get. So a team of a half-dozen supply chain specialists at Skanska had to unwind a tangle of contractors and subcontractors and persuade a manufacturer to send unfinished doors, with high-tech lock sets to …
