C.T. Taylor has established a reputation for quality as a multiple award-winning consolidated construction management company. Since 1977, clients in Ohio have come to expect impeccable results when C.T. Taylor is on a project.
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Regardless of a project’s uniqueness or complexity, C.T. Taylor can leverage its diverse industry expertise and its substantial operational capacities to offer its clients world-class service and ‘Taylor-made’ results that deliver on all project goals.
Through its affiliations and long-running industry relationships, as well as the ability to self-perform much of its own work, C.T. Taylor has differentiated itself from its market competitors. From project concept to close-out, C.T. Taylor is proactive and has the capacity to control the pace, quality and safety on every project it undertakes.
In addition to self-performing, C.T. Taylor adds value and guarantees results for clients with the support of a network of highly reliable, top quality subcontractors and vendors. No matter what the chosen project delivery method is on a project, C.T. Taylor has consistently met and exceeded project goals and clients’ needs.
Recently, the state of Ohio passed new construction reforms which have moved the industry and the bidding process toward a construction manager at risk delivery method; C.T. Taylor is poised to take full advantage of these changes. Ohio House Bill 153 and the changes therein stand to serve the company well. “They are going away from the traditional design-bid-build method with multiple prime contractors bidding on each package,” explains Les Yager, Senior Estimator and LEED® Coordinator with C.T. Taylor.
“With what was happening previously, an agency construction manager had no risk, and no financial stake in the project,” he says. “By changing to a construction manager at risk, a construction manager has to review the drawings and is involved from the concept of the drawings, from the schematic design, to design development, to construction drawings so their input is going to be throughout the entire process.”
The new reform allows for budgets to be made at each stage of the design process to ensure the budgetary oversight required for publicly funded projects. Projects of longer duration are subject to changes in material prices and changing market values complicated the ability to budget far in advance. By enacting this change, budgets will be more accurate and up to date.
“We would find that by the time a job came out from a bid, from when it was designed, it could be a year to a year and a half. A lot of material prices and installation prices were increasing and they were never accounted for,” Yager explains, noting that for some companies, sticking to an undercut budget can greatly impact project delivery.
Ohio’s construction reform has had a substantial impact on C.T. Taylor’s ability to compete as a construction manager at risk. Instead of having to bid on projects from a pool of 15 to 20 contractors, Bill 153 has dictated that construction managers be selected on a Best Value basis weighing both cost and qualifications. This gives C.T. Taylor an even stronger industry presence. “In most instances on projects you’re decreasing the number of short listed construction managers down to three, so the overall ability to get that work is better because you’re not necessarily tied to just taking the low number,” says Yager. Indeed, the low number is not always the best number and won’t always result in the highest standards of project delivery.
“By having the construction manager as a stakeholder in the process, and being a very integral part of that, it allows a better team approach for the architect, owner and the construction manager at risk,” he says. “We are finding that this is very helpful to us in that we do self-perform a lot of our own work, from concrete and steel to carpentry and general trade items. It gives an overall better product for the owner.”
C.T. Taylor offers construction manager at risk services, as well as traditional contracting and design/build and sustainable building services. The team offers a full scope of pre-construction services and excels in terms of scheduling, cost management, and safety. C.T. Taylor also offers demolition, industrial and historical renovations, custom fabrication, tilt up and pre-cast concrete, structural steel, pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMB), underpinning and shoring, and rigging and crane services.
The company is LEED® oriented and is also a member of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). In 2014, the firm was selected as the USGBC Builder of the Year and Les Yager was selected as the LEED® Green Associate of the Year.
Yager is not the only LEED® Green Associate at C.T. Taylor, with more employees slated for certification in the near future. “Sustainable design is integral in all of our applications, whether somebody wants to go for the certification of LEED® or just having projects built to those standards,” he notes.
C.T. Taylor affiliates include ICON Construction Solutions, Structural Building Systems Inc. and C.T. Leasing. ICON Construction Solutions serves as the construction manager at risk and design/build arm for work with numerous Ohio public entities. ICON combines the management expertise of Scaparotti Construction Group, Greenspace Construction Services with C.T. Taylor’s craftsmanship and general contracting capacities.
Structural Building Systems, meanwhile, provides C.T. Taylor’s field labor force. Structural Building Systems is an AISC certified steel erector with expertise in carpentry, concrete and structural steel. C.T. Leasing provides the required equipment necessary for C.T. Taylor and its affiliates to deliver projects on-time, on-budget and on-spec.
C.T. Taylor and ICON are currently involved in the construction of the North Ridgeville 3-8 School and Stadium project. “North Ridgeville includes a collaborative area that is utilizing geofoam to create the seating area which is a little unusual for a K to 12 school,” explains Yager of the unique features of the North Ridgeville school project. C.T. Taylor was also selected for the Norton High School project, chosen by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) and considered to be the best value to serve as construction manager at risk on the $32 million project. The 128,000 square foot space (plus additional LFI square footage for a 600 seat performing arts auditorium) is set to be completed in the summer of 2016.
The company has experienced a great deal of growth over the past year, much of that originating in the primary and secondary education market. In order to sustain the 15 to 20 percent growth the company has experienced, C.T. Taylor added to its team of professionals, drawing on its affiliates to sustain this growth while continuing to offer the same value and quality clients have come to expect. “We’ve added some new staff, some new project engineers,” says Yager. “We’ve redeployed some of our senior level project managers more into [the role of] director of pre-construction services to better allow this integration.”
C.T. Taylor is not only a construction management company of choice, it is also an employer of choice. “Since we do self-perform our own concrete, our own steel, carpentry, and general trade items, without the craftsmen we would just strictly be a broker,” explains Yager. Brokers, he explains, “have very little oversight into how a project looks, how it is completed. We have the ability to take pride in our work.” In appreciation of its highly skilled employees, the firm offers healthcare benefits, 401K programs, competitive wages and a culture that holds onto employees for years to come. As a result of its competitive wages and benefits, C.T. Taylor is rewarded with a group of loyal, tenured employees with a great deal of industry knowledge and experience. Indeed, the average employee has been with C.T. Taylor for over ten years, some even longer.
In addition to wage and benefit incentives, quality and safety are the characteristics of the company – “Earmark traits,” as Yager refers to them. “We give the best quality product that we can. We keep everybody safe and going home at night and give the owner the best product he can have at the finish.” This commitment makes C.T. Taylor attractive to its employees and to its clients alike.
Key to quality project delivery at C.T. Taylor is safety, as well as a well-trained and experience workforce. The company is committed to ensuring the safest possible work sites, and this commitment includes a comprehensive safety program complete with training classes and a full-time dedicated safety coordinator. All of C.T. Taylor’s superintendents are 30 Hour OSHA trained and certified, First Aid and CPR certified, and ABCO Fire Protection trained, in addition to the individual craftsman being 10 Hour OSHA trained and certified, while subcontractors and vendors are held to the same stringent expectations for safety. C.T. Taylor participates in voluntary OSHA on-site inspections and has participated in the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation Drug Free Workplace Program since 2002.
“We are also going to a cloud-based computer program that allows us real time access to drawing, specifications, photographs, or any changes in the drawings – so our superintendents in the field, our project engineers, our project managers, our quality control director and safety director have the ability to have that information at their fingertips,” Yager explains.
“We are continuing with the construction manager at risk program and we’re able to assist more school districts in their venues, to build their schools, build them competitively and give them the best product that we can,” Yager explains of C.T. Taylor’s short term goals. “Long term, our goal is to stand out and be one of the leading construction managers at risk in the state of Ohio.”
To be sure, C.T. Taylor has poised itself to achieve success in both the short and long term and will continue to deliver Taylor-made results. As an industry leader, C.T. Taylor was built on a commitment to quality output and world-class service from design, through the construction process, to project turnover.
