< Previousdownturn of the market, acquiring bank notes and land. Soon, the company was in possession of a significant amount of land assets, and started a production home building company to sell these assets. “That evolved to a full private equity shop, commercial real estate development, commercial construction with Strategic Builders, and obviously we have our own in-house property management group. So, we took each step of the real estate development process and brought it all in-house to create a vertically integrated company, and it’s been a lot of fun,” Traeden explains. Indeed, the Utah real estate business is going strong, and the state is projected to continue its economic growth, allowing J. Fisher to confidently continue to invest in this market. On top of Salt Lake City, Strategic Builders has also been fortunate to work with other cities in Utah, such as Ogden. In 2019, J Fisher co. and Strategic Builders will collaborate with Ogden as part of a public-private partnership and are pursuing opportunities with the newly formed Millcreek city as well.“Planners and economic development directors in these cities have come to us to help create some amazing projects. Some of them are still in design and concept, but we are excited to be involved with these visionary city officials – which are tough to find sometimes – who understand how to transform and revitalize their city,” says Traeden. At the moment, Strategic Builders employs about 15 people, but all that may change if the company continues to grow at its current rate. “We took each step of the real estate development process and brought it all in-house to create a vertically integrated company.”DEC 2018 - JAN 201920“The Utah real estate business is going strong, and the state is projected to continue its economic growth.”“We’re pretty lean,” says Traeden. “That is partly because we are involved in the process from the beginning. We do third-party deals on a relationship basis, but most projects are done in-house through our own companies. Since we’re involved from Day 1 as part of that team, we’re pretty efficient in how we operate and plan for staffing the projects.”That being said, the growing, six-year-old company currently has over $500 million worth of projects in its pipeline. “If we hit all that we’re planning for, we will probably double our number of employees through the end of next year,” Traeden adds. “We’re actually breaking ground on our own Strategic Builders corporate office because we have outgrown our current space.”The firm broke ground in November on the Parrish Crossing Office Building, and will move in by fall of 2019. It will occupy the third and topmost floor of its new building, and will design the TIs for other tenants as well. Tenants will be able to lease between 2,922 and 28,225 square feet of office space as desired. There will be ample parking and immediate access to both I-15 and Legacy Parkway, making the new facility a great central location with excellent surrounding amenities for businesses in Centerville, Utah.When hiring, Traeden believes that the best leaders are proac-tive, thoughtful, and able to keep a clear vision of the project at all times.As he says, “I look for energy and leadership in our employees. We could list a lot of different qualities like experience and time management, which are nice to have, but I find that the biggest asset in our team members is being proactive and not reactive. There are so many moving parts on a construc-tion project that if you don’t have leaders with a clear vision of how they want the project to progress, and the ability to guide all the team members and subcontractors to achieve 21CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS that vision, then schedules push, quality slips, and budgets get overrun,” he explains.While Strategic Builders has certainly been lucky to find amazing team members to take that proactive approach to construc-tion and lead each day by setting the vision for the project, the company’s trusted subcontractors are also key to the team’s success. Traeden notes that finding and keeping amazing sub-contractors can be challenging in a booming market, but by running efficient, safe, clean job sites and showing apprecia-tion for the subcontractors and all that they do, the company attracts like-minded trade partners.“We try to create a team mentality on our projects,” he says. “If we can help our subcontractors be successful each day, then we’re going to be successful, and the projects will be successful. They play a huge role, and our goal at Strategic Builders as a contractor is that when subs are given a choice, we are the ones that they lean toward when choosing their next project. We want to make sure that they want to be on our jobs and let them know that we definitely want them on our jobs,” he explains.“I find that the biggest asset in our team members is being proactive and not reactive.”DEC 2018 - JAN 201922 Strategic Builders’ safety-first philosophy is trademarked as S.A.F.E™. (Strategic Accident Free Environment). “The S.A.F.E™. approach strives to eliminate worksite incidents through pre-planning construction activi-ties with safety engagement commencing at project pursuit,” reads the firm’s comprehensive website.“The Strategic Accident Free Environment is an attitude and culture of higher standards. These stan-dards, along with our policies, mandatory safety inspections and training programs, have created a comprehensive and effective safety organization.”Building S.A.F.E.™. is supported by four guiding principles:In fact, Strategic Builders’ safety-first philosophy is trade-marked as S.A.F.E.™ (Strategic Accident Free Environment), and the philosophy is greatly appreciated by all who do business with the company.Since its establishment, Strategic Builders has doubled its volume each year. Now, it is working toward continuing this trend of sustained and measured growth, laying the ground-work to someday become a legacy company and pass man-agement on to the next generation of talented individuals. “We’re a young group, so we still have several decades – hope-fully – to build the business, but we’re also taking on more third-party clients each year, and it has been great to expand that line of our business through strong relationships with other developers in Utah,” says Traeden. “As word gets out about our approach to the process from the owner’s perspective, we’ve been able to be a bit more selective in the partnerships we create, and have been fortunate to work with amazing owners.”BE S.A.F.E™. • Injuries are preventable • Only perform a job if it is safe • Working safely is a condition of employment • Practice and expect safe behavior everywhere, every day23CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Established in 1910 by Italian immigrant Dominic Camosy, the company began its life as a design-build firm working primarily on residential projects. A carpenter and surveyor by trade, he was no stranger to hard work, and the company prospered as a result of dedication and building relationships. After four decades operating in the residential market, the company expanded in 1950 to serve new sectors including public, commercial, and industrial customers. Keeping a clear focus on these relationships with customers allowed the company to have a finely-tuned understanding of their needs and to adapt with the changing landscape of the construction industry. This helped Camosy to identify very early the benefits of highly organized management processes, and the company was among the first in its region to hire full-time, college-educated project managers and estimators, and to invest in an in-house mainframe computer for electronic data processing. The company could react quickly to customer needs because it was committed to understanding them. “Before construction management was really thought of as construction management, we were providing the essentials of preconstruction services to many of our clients,” says John Bosman, Director of Business Development. “They’d know us from building something for them, and they’d come to us asking for our opinion on how much something would cost. We were doing it basically as a favor based on relationships that had been established from previous work. Our reputation was such that people trusted us to give them realistic estimates.” By the 1970s, it was clear that Camosy Construction had found an approach that allowed it to stand out and outpace com-petitors. Among many industry honors, it was recognized by Engineering News-Record magazine nine times as one of the top four hundred contractors in the nation. To make the most of its growth, the company consolidated its Illinois and Wisconsin construction companies with its construction man-agement business, resulting in a single entity poised for even more success. Today, as the company enters its 109th year in business, some things have changed, but some have stayed exactly the same. While the bulk of the work has shifted from design-build con-struction for private customers to primarily construction man-agement services for public projects, Camosy Construction is still centered on being a trustworthy partner. Written by Ryan CartnerCamosy Construction provides a combination of general contracting, construction management, and select design-build services to both public and private clients in Illinois and Wisconsin. But beyond its impressive portfolio of projects, the company’s leadership believes that the most important thing it builds is trust. DEC 2018 - JAN 20192425CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS “We espouse the old-fashioned values of do what you say; don’t make promises you can’t keep; and a handshake is, in fact, as good as a contract,” says Bosman. “That’s something that’s true top to bottom here. We’re built on being a trustworthy partner to our clients. In managing their work, building their build-ings, being a resource to them for information, it’s more than building a product; it’s about building a relationship that will last for many years.” In 1963, Camosy was hired by Carthage College to build its first building on their beautiful lakefront campus in Kenosha. The college is a landmark on the shore of Lake Michigan and a stunning example of the quality workmanship for which it is known, but it is the attentive care that the company has for the customer’s needs that keeps them calling. Fifty years later, the company is still working with Carthage College. The people have changed, but the relationship is ongoing.In the village of Mount Prospect, Illinois, it is erecting a $21.5-million police facility. It is a big job in a relatively unique sector that the company won by making the effort to build trust on prior jobs. Three primary people involved in the project – the chief of Mount Prospect Police, the project manager, and the village manager – worked with Camosy on three separate occasions building police stations in other municipalities before moving to Mount Prospect. “So despite that they’ve all changed the municipalities for which they work, they still chose us as their construction manager because of the relationships we built with them before. Relationships last if you reinforce them with your behaviors: being trustworthy and honest and looking out for their best interests,” says Bosman.Many of these long-standing associations have lasted through major changes at Camosy. When the company began to transi-tion from being primarily a builder toward more management roles, it found itself bidding less and negotiating more con-tracts. As market conditions evolved, this transition continued, but the company still does a regular workload in the hard-bid market. Retaining this aspect of the business has enabled the company to keep a finger on the pulse of what the market conditions are at any given time, which helps with providing accurate estimates to its construction management clients. Customers trust Camosy, because time and again it has proven itself a reliable partner. The company’s leadership believes that the key to delivering an exceptional product every time is putting the people with the most experience in the right positions. At the executive level, all officers have a minimum of twenty-five years in the industry. As far down as project managers and superintendents, it always delegates projects according to who has the most experience on jobs of that type. While a larger firm might have more projects of a particular type on its resume, it generally will not have a dedicated team for working in that sector. It is highly unlikely that it will have a group of workers with more experience than those provided by Camosy because its team will be the very same one that worked on the last five projects of that type. As a company with construction management projects as its primary workload, Camosy decided to not go the way of many broker style firms. It still employs its own tradespeople who perform concrete, masonry, carpentry, general labor, selective demolition, and other work. Having its own work-force means that the company can keep a close eye on the quality of its output. To maintain the level of experience that its people have, the company has to take care of and retain its workforce. Recently, the company was recognized by its local chamber of commerce for being the best place to work in Kenosha County. Employees submitted testimonials about their expe-riences working for the company, and in the end, Camosy won. The leadership understands that the company’s true value is in nurturing relationships that last, and that depends on the quality of its people. DEC 2018 - JAN 201926 “We hired a young project manager about eight years ago,” says President and CEO John Camosy. “A recruiter gave us about ten names. We interviewed them, narrowed it down, and eventually hired our #1 choice. I got a follow-up call from the recruiter about eleven months later asking how it was working out because the service offered a guarantee. After eleven months, he was only done three quarters of one job. I told the recruiter, ‘I’ll let you know in five years.’” Camosy Construction cares about its workforce, and as a result, the workforce cares about the work they are doing. Recently, the company was hired to construct an addition to a Kenosha County-operated skilled nursing facility called the Brookside Care Center. When the first phase of the project was complete, the Executive Director of the facility spoke with Marketing Manager Trisha Camosy about the experi-ence. “She told me that the move from the original building to the new addition was hard on a lot of the residents. Because they’re older, some suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia,” says Trisha Camosy. “She told me that there was a lady in her late nineties suffering from severe Alzheimer’s who hadn’t spoken in years. After moving her into the addition, with its new open spaces, fireplaces, beautiful interior design, she was overtaken.” According to Trisha, the woman’s daughter came to the exec-utive director in tears because she saw her mother, who had been an avid pianist and music teacher throughout her life, miming the act of playing a piano with her hands. “She said that was one of the many things that made her know that her vision of the addition becoming a home had been achieved.” The Brookside Care Center is just one of the roughly two hundred projects that Camosy Construction delivers every year. For more than a century, the company has developed relationships that stand the test of time, by providing excel-lent service and, most of all, by building trust. “It is the attentive care that the company has for the customer’s needs that keeps them calling.”27CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Spartan Contracting Corporation embodies the true meaning of doing things right, but differently. Standing testament to this is the fact that seventy-five percent of its customers will return for further projects. We spoke to President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Kramer and Vice President of Business Development David Embury to find out more.Written by Pauline MüllerIn an industry where the pressure is high and only top performers rule, it helps to have people on your side who can cope with challenges and still have fun. While this formidable company appears to make light of tough situations like bank decommissions and the like, solid people skills go into its refreshingly differ-ent approach to doing business.In fact, the company takes client satisfaction so seriously, its customers’ personal-ity types are carefully matched with the right teams to ensure the highest level of compatibility possible. It comes as no surprise, then that Spartan Contracting Corporation often receives fan mail from happy clients – sometimes nearly every day of the week.The company is based in Tampa, Florida and has worked across twenty-two states and throughout the Southwest. It is licensed in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, with the Alabama license bound to arrive any day now.The company particularly prides itself on its meticulous financial center build outs and minimal-error renovations. It has also just completed the first of a two credit union project for the world’s largest credit union – which happens to be a repeat customer – in Raleigh, North Carolina.While demand is currently still relatively low, the company is geared towards a future of green building strategies. This includes a mainly paper-free office and tracking its demolition debris to ensure that it does not end in a landfill. Spartan is well-versed in dealing with work for Fortune 500 companies and committed to elevating industry service standards. This trailblazer is not shy to question and adapt outdated methodologies to achieve outstanding results.“Just because everyone’s been doing something in the same way for decades doesn’t mean that it is the right way. With everything speeding up, projects that used to take twelve weeks now often have to be completed in six to eight weeks, because technology is driving schedules these days. Our project managers are some of the brightest and youngest out-of-the-box-thinkers when it comes to management,” says President David Embury.“The company particularly prides itself on its meticulous financial center build outs and minimal-error renovations.”29CONSTRUCTION IN FOCUS Next >