Pre-Con Builders

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :7/2/2007 12:42:35 PM

Pre-Con Builders has developed a growing, and satisfied, list of national clients that keep coming back for more

Written and produced by David Weldon & Michael Townsend

In business, as in life, you’re known by the company you keep.

And in the case of Pre-Con Builders, the companies it keeps say a lot about the quality of its work, dedication, and customer service.

A design/build company located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Pre-Con is in the unique position of having to do little new business marketing these days. Customers already want to come to Pre-Con: sometimes the result of word-of-mouth referrals, or — as is most often the case — as repeat business from a growing list of national chains that trust Pre-Con to handle whatever local projects they have.

From Starbucks, to Dollarama, to Boston Pizza, to Tony Romas, to McDonalds, and numerous other leading retailers, Pre-Con finds itself routinely just getting the nod when those customers have a new franchise to open in the greater Winnipeg, or broader Canada, marketplace.

“Much of our work is negotiated with our clients,” says Jeff Hawryluk, general manager for Pre-Con. “Eighty percent of our work is done for existing clients that we have established long-term relationships with.”

And that work runs the full spectrum, from coordinating the initial building design, to handling site preparation, to securing the permits, to managing the construction and coordinating the utilities — from concept to completion, as Hawryluk calls it.

It is this one-stop-shop approach that has really enabled Pre-Con Builders to stand out in the Winnipeg market, offering a level of project ownership that most of the competition can’t.

“Over the past three or four years, our client base has expanded considerably,” Hawryluk says. At $60 million in revenues for 2006, “We aren’t the only busy contractor in town, but we are certainly busier than most,” he says.

That pace has been aided by what Hawryluk says is a more long term stable economy in Manitoba than some other Canadian provinces. “The economy has been very strong for a while now. We don’t tend to go through the highs and lows that some others go through, especially the petroleum and manufacturing based provinces,” Hawryluk says.

Equally important is the fact that the core staff at Pre-Con Builders are not merely general contractors — but experienced engineers, drafting professionals, and project managers - who all bring a wealth of design and conceptual skills to the table, not just building experience.

“We have three or four direct competitors,” Hawryluk says. “The difference is with the service we provide. Some say they do the same, but they don’t really have the resources in place internally to design projects the way we do. We are designers and builders.”

In addition, there are administrative and support staff, of course. And a company site supervisor is assigned in the field at each project the company has underway at any given time (generally around 15 - 20). There is also a designated crew for working with pre-engineered “Butler” steel buildings, which the company does a fair amount of work with.

All told, Pre-Con has approximately 80 staff employees. Any additional crew at a given project site are normally subcontractors, working under the supervision of the company. In those cases, Pre-Con again puts its focus on long-term relationships, using contractors it has prior experience with and that excel in Design/Build type of work.

In terms of skills needed by the company, Hawryluk says the most important is simply, experience. “Our project managers and site supervisors have an average of 15 years of experience.”

With staff longevity like that, recruiting has not been a problem for the company.

“Our commitment has been to developing and maintaining very long-term employees, and we have been very fortunate to have people coming to us,” Hawryluk says. “We have been regarded as a preferred employer.”

From vision to concept

Pre-Con takes a deliberately different approach with clients than most of its local competitors. The company does not normally bid to win projects in the open market.

Working one-on-one with clients that approach Pre-Con, the company takes a concept from a customer, designs a structure tailored to their particular needs, and presents a finished design proposal and pricing package to the client for review. Back-and-forth then takes place, as client and company work toward a common vision.

“We aren’t designed to be a bid-spec company, we’re more of a services oriented company,” Hawryluk says of the company’s approach.

By services, he means lots of communication with the client up front to best assess how a structure will be used, how the customer may grow in it in the future, and what Pre-Con believes to be the best solution. That results in a lot of changes along the way, but ultimately a finished product that will best meet the client’s needs.

In that sense, Pre-Con’s project managers and engineers serve as consultants on each project, and in many cases, have the advantage of already having a relationship with the client. In the end, Pre-Con has provided a complete turn-key service to each customer, managing the entire process from beginning to end when the new facility is ready to open its doors.

While much of the company’s projects involve retail, office or restaurant projects, it has designed and built facilities of many types — including a “state of the art” chicken hatchery in rural Brandon and a Pizza Pop plant for Pillsbury in Winnipeg. Special projects are a specialty for the company, and projects can involve retrofits of existing commercial space as well as new construction.

An example of a retrofit project is one the company is now doing for ING Real Estate. ING is relocating one of its tenants into a former industrial building site. Pre-Con was engaged to handle the project, which involves demolishing half of a 100,000 sq. ft. building, and redesigning and remodeling the other half.

“We’ve done a lot of these,” Hawryluk says. “We put together a scope of the work, come up with a preliminary budget price, negotiate the final contract price, put together a set of drawings, put a contract in place, engage the electrical, mechanical and civil contractors, and come up with a finished product that meets or exceeds the client’s needs.”

Projects can also involve coming into a project midstream, and scaling-down a previous design to meet a client’s budget.

“We have been brought into projects that were greatly over-designed,” Hawryluk says. In such cases, a customer may have had design elements and materials incorporated beyond what they really required or that didn’t really serve their needs. That is why Hawryluk says the one-stop-shop service approach is sometimes better served for the customer in the long run.

Other projects the company is currently involved with include a two story office building, two Boston Pizza franchises (one in Winnipeg, and another in Windsor), a Tony Romas restaurant, a self storage facility, an auto dealership, a half dozen Dolorama retail stores throughout Manitoba, and three retail hardware stores in rural Manitoba.

This fall the company will also begin work on a $7 million hotel and banquet room expansion.

With all the retail store experience the company has, Hawryluk says he is starting to notice a trend: “The end of the big box stores.”

In terms of technology, Pre-Con uses the same basic builder-focused software applications available in the market, including three-dimensional design software. Where it is making the heaviest investment in technology now is in what goes into its projects.

“We build pretty much the same buildings that everyone else does, but we’ve managed to incorporate Pre-Engineered construction with conventional construction and include some green building technologies, to provide our clients with a product that is affordable,” Hawryluk says.

The impact of that is certainly beneficial to the customer, but it does sometimes mean additional design time for Pre-Con. The payback is with the customer loyalty that the company has developed.

“Our clients speak for themselves,” Hawryluk notes. “We’ve had clients for many, many years, and continue to strive to produce a high level of service that keeps them from going anywhere else.”