Spokane, Wash.-based Garco Construction Inc. had humble beginnings, starting out as the construction arm of Garco Building Systems in Airway Heights, Wash. After being purchased in 1978 by Tim Welsh and Bob Carter, the primarily metal building contractor with its own steel and concrete crews, evolved into a full-service general contractor/construction manager with its own in-house design staff.
By adding an in-house design staff, Garco Construction became one of the first true design-build firms around, which worked well with the use of metal building systems. Through the design-build process, Garco has been able to be heavily involved in the design of mechanical and electrical systems of their projects. This allows the company to “strive to provide as cost-efficient systems as practical with an eye toward both upfront costs and operating efficiencies relative to what might be expected for LEED Silver applications,” explains Bill Savitz, director of business development at Garco Construction. “It is our experience that accomplishing that level of standard has an operating cost payback that justifies the effort toward improved efficiencies in systems and controls.”
As the company continued to grow, it began approaching other forms of construction, including conventional steel and concrete structures. “A lot of the growth and evolution of Garco Construction involved moving away from strictly metal building construction, to being able to provide construction methods of a variety of sources,” says Savitz.
Working Together
The ability to self-perform concrete and steel erection has proven to be a benefit. Savitz notes that it is important to have the same people performing the same functions time and time again over the course of the company’s history, allowing the company better control over the project, schedule and budget. “I can’t stress the importance of self-performance enough; it’s what’s led to the consistency, efficiency and quality of our delivered projects,” says Savitz.
Additionally, Garco Construction’s in-house design team has the knowledge and understanding to ensure projects are designed and built as efficiently as possible, right from the start. By making sure the client has a clear understanding of how a project is going to work and what the anticipated deliverable is going to be, the client gets a sense of confidence in knowing what is happening with their project. Together, this provides a lot more predictable conclusion to the project, Savitz explains.
By integrating Building Information Modeling into the design group, clients can get a complete picture of their project. “We see BIM as the way of the future, and getting into it early allows us to have an opportunity to demonstrate to a client what BIM provides to them in terms of the completed three-dimensional model and the tracking of products that are integrated into their project,” Savitz says. Since the federal government uses BIM as a qualifier when handing out work, Garco Construction has been able to obtain a fair amount of work for the government and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Keys to Success
Garco Construction prides itself on accomplished consistent means and methods toward high quality projects that are consistently on time, if not early, and within or under budget. This consistency in both the general contractor/construction management and design-build delivery systems has been important to helping the company grow over the years, Savitz says. “Our reputation over 35 years has been built on those benchmarks,” he says. “We are a proven entity and our reputation to those ends is what has driven much of our growth. Reputation, relationships and word-of-mouth is what has driven our success and, conversely, the lack of failures and the bad reputation that can be developed as a result of failures is something we work hard to eliminate.”
Savitz explains that Garco works hard to be sure customers are happy on the day the keys are handed over, and for years to come with the performance of their buildings. When an issue does develop, Garco makes that it is taken care of and the end result is satisfaction on the part of the client. “At the end of a project, if the customer isn’t happy about something, we will do what’s necessary to make them happy,” Savitz continues. “It is our number one goal.”
A Growing Company
Garco Construction has been involved in the GC/CM construction delivery system for the last seven
or eight years. “We do a lot of continuing work for a lot of different types of clients, including governmental
clients. A big part of what’s helped us grow is public works projects that have gone from hard bid, design-bid-build type work to both GC/CM and design-build. Having the opportunity to propose on design-build or GC/CM work has really expanded on our ability to separate ourselves from just the low-bid work that has been pretty typical in years past, relative to public works projects.”
Savitz continues, “What [GC/CM] has allowed us to do is really get involved with projects of much greater scope than what we historically have done, and that’s largely because we’ve been able to bring our construction management systems into play in larger public works projects.”
That ability has allowed Garco Construction to go after jobs in the $50 to $60 million range. By performing well on those projects, Garco has received good feedback and good quality ratings from its public works clients, which can lead to more work. “Having excellent performance in that area really helps us get qualified for projects that other contractors would probably otherwise not get qualified for,” Savitz explains. “That’s been very important because it’s allowed us to showcase our expertise and experience in that delivery system and that has allowed us to leverage that position into a point where we can gain further projects of that nature.”
“It comes down to consistency and delivery, and consistency and quality, and consistency of being able to maintain budgets and schedules, and making sure that the client is involved in the process and is part of the solution when it comes to the challenges that come with any construction project,” Savitz continues. “It really comes down to customer service and then being able to do the things that you say you are going to do and doing them consistently. That’s probably the biggest and most important thing that we’ve learned over the years.”
Looking Ahead
While the current economic climate has been rough for many companies, Garco Construction has been able to keep busy with a backlog of work, including federal and Army Corps of Engineers work. Having the experience and quality ratings that over the years with federal work has allowed Garco Construction to be able to be in a very select group, relative to what are otherwise pretty sparse construction dollars, explains Savitz.
As Garco Construction heads into the future, the management looks towards turning the company over to the younger people coming up from within the organization, all while maintaining the same sense of culture and mission that has helped the company to grow over the last 30 plus years. “Our intent is to essentially continue what we’ve been doing-make sure we have the right people here, make sure that we maintain the people that have gotten us here-and to continue with basically the same basic mission that we’ve always maintained, which is to make sure we have that good consistency, quality, budget, schedule and delivery,” Savitz says.
Garco Construction Inc.
4114 E. Broadway
Spokane, WA 99202
(509) 535-4688
www.garco.com
