J.M. Coull

Source: Construction Digital

Date :18/03/2008 04:54:12

Construction management firm J.M. Coull’s success can be attributed to solid investment in employees and a demonstrated focus on pioneering technology. Exec learns more

Written by Emmet Cole and produced by Tom Holsinger

Intrepid Massachusetts-based construction management company J.M. Coull believes in a two-fold, development-based approach to customer satisfaction: Grow in technology. Grow its employees. The result? A growing business.

“We focus less on how big the company is in terms of top-line revenue. We’re not about that,” President Andrew A. Coull says. “What we want is growth opportunities for our customers and our people, and if that means that top-line revenue increases as a result, then so be it.”

By forging ahead on the leading edge of technology, and equipping its employees for career advancement, J.M. Coull is thriving and striving toward the top of the construction management industry.

Technology titans

Since the late 1990s, J.M. Coull has pioneered web technology use in the construction management industry, starting with its use of an innovative and proprietary internet-based project management tool. While more commonplace today, their then-innovative internet use allows J.M. Coull to connect geographically disparate parts of a project team - e.g. a project owner might live in North Carolina, while the architect and engineers work in Chicago. Coull cites one customer who frequently traveled to Korea as an example of someone who benefited greatly.

“When we invested in it, we were on the real leading edge,” Coull says. “We’ve always been visionary in terms of technology and application of technology to our industry. We’ve never been afraid to invest in technology as long as it supports what we’re trying to do.”

Currently, that vision is being translated into several new ideas, including a new online bidding technology. This system enables the company to bid all parts of a complex project to an array of subcontractors over the Internet, and has now been in use by the company for nearly two months.

“The whole bidding process is archaic and extremely intensive from an information-flow standpoint. In a typical project, we probably have between 55 to 150 subs vying for work, and we need to make sure they all get the exact same information quickly so their bids are equal in scope,” Coull says. “We’ve been able to streamline the process using the Internet, resulting in more efficiency, less costs, better competitiveness on our part and cost savings for our customers.”

Employee opportunities

J.M. Coull’s success can also be attributed to the company’s heavy employee investment, through a dual-focused training regimen. Because many of the company’s clients have come from high-tech sectors like the microelectronics, biopharmaceutical, medical device and life science industries, it’s critical that J.M. Coull employees understand their clients’ unique needs.

“We have a great deal of expertise working in our company,” Coull says. “Most companies that do what we do have project managers who only know how to manage the construction project. But we believe our people must have effective interpersonal skills combined with technical knowledge of what they’re managing in order to succeed. We have to understand what our customers do, how they do it, and then how we can apply our management talents to their needs.”

But J.M. Coull also maintains an intense employee training focus on general management and business knowledge — an approach that benefits the employees (equips them with a skill set necessary for career advancement), the company (capable, motivated employees) and the customer (better-managed construction projects).

In fact, the company has embarked on a year-long program where all of its employees gather together every two weeks for mandatory management training. This includes classes on conflict and stress management, dealing with difficult people and team building, all of which help “put people in a position to succeed from both a personal and professional standpoint in their everyday approach to projects as well as life in general,” says Coull.

It’s all because J.M. Coull believes strongly that giving its employees the best possible chance to succeed benefits the company, its workforce, and its customers equally.

“Our ability to demonstrate growth translates into career paths at our company,” Coull explains. “We care about our employees, and demonstrate that through real training. Most people appreciate the time and money we’re putting into this training, which then positions them successfully, whether they stay at our company or not.”

As a result, the company boasts impressive employee retention rates in an industry that’s notorious for high turnover. Coull says that, of the company’s 32 employees, five have stayed with J.M. Coull for 20 years or more, and several more have hit the ten or 15-year marks. Last November, Coull hit the 20 year mark himself with three others having already hit the 20 year milestone before him. “That delights me”, he says. “I like being part of this team of people who have chosen to make a career here.”

Constructing success

From their strong technological base and unwavering employee commitment, J.M. Coull has become a leading-edge service provider to the construction industry. The company manages all aspects of projects, from idea inception to construction completion.

At the pre-construction phase, J.M. Coull offers services like project programming, constructability consultation, site and building selection and evaluation, design and engineering assistance, and project budgeting and scheduling. Once construction is underway, J.M. Coull handles design/build issues, construction management aspects and general contracting.

J.M. Coull oversees projects like the new corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility for Bruker Daltronics — which develops mass spectrometers and other products for the life science industry — and the new cell biology lab and inventory area for Boston Scientific Corporation. The company builds research and development facilities for clients like Rohm & Haas Microelectronic Materials, and expands and renovates more leisure-oriented spaces like the Nashawtuc Country Club in Massachusetts.

“We have focused on process-intensive industries,” Coull says. “By that I mean biopharmaceutical, microelectronic, medical device and life sciences but have also diversified over the past several years by building projects for customers in growing markets like non-technology-based manufacturing, wholesale distribution and health care.”

As a result, revenues grew by an estimated 15 percent in 2007 - J.M. Coull’s best financial year in the company’s history. Coull expects revenues to grow another 20 percent in 2008.

Big growth ahead

Although the company dabbles in multi-family housing projects, the bulk of J.M. Coull’s work is done in more commercial and industrial sectors. The company does not do single-family home construction, and has therefore largely avoided the recent housing market collapse that has sent several construction companies spinning. But the company still sees several future challenges on the horizon.

For example, J.M. Coull is heavily tied to its customers’ capital expenditures and when their businesses are down, they tend to preserve that capital. Coull also sees a growing trend of transience among younger workers. “Younger people today don’t necessarily look at a company as a place to be for their entire career,” he says. “In fact, two or three years is now typical for twenty-something employees to relocate to another job. We see that as a cultural detriment to what we’re trying to do.”

But the biggest challenge, Coull says, is the decline in activity in certain manufacturing regions. To offset this and diversify, the company plans to broadly expand its geographical footprint. In fact, the company cites plans to open at least one office in a new geographical area in the next two years, in order to begin applying its knowledge and capability to new areas.

In other words, J.M. Coull will keep growing – online and across the country, for its customers and for its employees. “It’s a means to our end of trying to offer growth opportunities to our people,” Coull says. “That’s what keeps them at our company.”

Click here to view the corporate brochure on JM Coull