Casey Carver builds contracting career with skill, relationships

When it comes to being successful as a general contractor, Casey Carver firmly believes you’ve simply got to be good at what you. That means being adept at constructing or repairing something, but also knowledgeable about setting up and nurturing relationships.

“I believe so, 100 percent,” said the Columbus resident and native of Savannah, Ga. “If you can do what you say you’re going to do. If you can build a quality product, and the end result is the owners are happy, then architects keep getting more business, vendors keep getting business, and general contractors keep getting business.”

Carver, 37, estimates about 95 percent of his business is negotiated with clients and customers, many who have used his services before and were satisfied.

“The most important thing to me is making that relationship and building it for the future,” he said.

That approach has served him well since starting his company, Carver Contracting, in 2011. His past projects — some that have won Historic Preservation Awards — include Columbus Children's Dentistry, 5o1 Salon on Broadway, 1236 Broadway, Painting With A Twist, Mann Finance on Broadway, Auburn Lasik & Eye Institute, Uptown Loan on Broadway, Houston Dental and Mimi's Mile Children's Track at St. Paul Church.

Most recently, he landed work on two Smoothie King buildings in Columbus, on Macon Road and Manchester Expressway, with the franchised outlets going into older structures that are being repurposed rather than torn down and built new.

The Ledger-Enquirer visited with Carver at the site recently to discuss his job, why he chose the profession and what advice he has for those seeking the services of a good general contractor. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. Do you have to bid for projects such as this Smoothie King?

A. I coordinated with a real-estate developer in town. (The franchisee) was looking at different properties. He contacted one of the commercial Realtors here, and we’re good friends, and he got me involved in the forefront of it. It’s kind of been a six- to eight-month process, so a lot of backlog time, a lot of coordination between us and the owners and franchisees.

Q. Does this open the door for more Smoothie Kings for you?

A. Most of the time, if it’s a bid job, it’s going to go out to everybody. These were negotiated projects for us. We were lucky enough to get it that way rather than having to go through the standard bid process.

Q. Bidding can be a bit of a crap shoot?

A. That’s right. You really just don’t know. A lot of the time, a developer who’s going to put an ABC building in and they put out for a bid, they’re really looking at price. They may not have any clue who the relationship is with that specific general contractor. I also think that with the coordination between an architect and an owner and a contractor on a negotiated build, it takes out a lot of that potential guess work. You can specifically narrow it down to what that owner really wants and provide the service to them.

Q. Describe how you got to this point in your career?

A. I worked for Turner Construction, which is a large national company. I worked for them about five or six years out of college. My wife’s from Columbus, so from there we got the opportunity to work for David Humphreys of Humphreys Associates. I worked for him as a project manager for four or five years. Then he decided to retire and live the good life, so I decided to go and get my residential license. Then I went back and got my commercial license and then turned to the relationships that I built with developers and architects over the last 10 years. They liked the coordination and the relationship that we had built, and they just kept calling.

Q. How many projects do you work on at any given time?

A. We’ve got about six or eight right now that we’ve got going. I typically stay in the Columbus market.

Q. Do some contractors become specialists in areas, such as doing medical buildings?

A. You do. You get your niche, that’s for sure. We’ve been very lucky to do quite a few dental offices. The doctors in town have all got their group of guys that they know who can do specific jobs. Obviously, a dental office is a little more intricate than a standard build because of the utilities and everything that have to go into it.

Q. Are there types of construction you prefer or enjoy doing more than others?

A. I’ve really been in the commercial side of construction. We do residential. We do kitchens, we do baths, we do additions. We do ground builds, and new home construction. But that’s on a negotiated side of it, too. We don’t do spec homes or anything like that. I think my background coming in after college and just working on large commercial stuff, that’s my forte in the industry.

Q. You made the right decision to go with construction work it appears?

A. Oh, yeah. Even growing up in Savannah, a good friend of mine, his father owned a pretty large commercial-residential-historic preservation company. He would always get us during the summers to demo an insurance repair fire job or put us on a trim work job on a custom house. So that kind of got the ball rolling and really got me interested in it. Then once I got to college I figured out very quickly that I couldn’t sit behind a desk (laughs).

Q. You’re always on the go?

A. I am. It’s always something new, even if it’s something like remodeling a kitchen from the 1970s. But you’re meeting different individuals, different homeowners, different business developers. That’s one of the nice little traits that comes with the contracting side.

Q. Have you done any work that stands out in your mind?

A. I would say the 5o1 Salon on Broadway. That was a 1970s loan office, and it’s now probably one of the forefront custom commercial hair salons in the United States. We did that about three years ago. The reason I say that is design wise, the owners were very specific with what they wanted, from the floor details to the old mill beams in the ceiling, and the custom concrete waterfall ledge cutting stations. On the ‘building green’ side of it, we reclaimed a lot of the different materials that were in there and we reused those for specific aspects throughout the project. You just never know what you’re going to find and what the customer’s thoughts are. With technology the way it is today you can jump on your cell phone and find a thousand different ideas.

Q. So that type of historic preservation work appeals to you?

A. It does. The ultimate goal is for Carver Contracting to have a very stable commercial division, a residential division, and then a historic preservation division. I think with Columbus and the history that it has, there’s tremendous potential. Instead of seeing a house or structure and one entity says just bulldoze it down and build something brand new, you can actually go in and work on it and bring it back to the original intent of that specific building.

Q. Day to day on the job, do you bounce around from one work site to another checking on things?

A. I bounce around. I’ve got a project manager that manages different jobs. But I spend probably half of my time in the office and half of my time going around and looking at the different jobs, and coordinating with subcontractors and coordinating with owners. In situtations like this (Smoothie King), the general public sees when you start. No one ever sees the six months prior with all of the coordination steps with the architects and the engineers and the owners, and the budgeting portion that really make a project start.

Q. Do you ever simply have to pick up a drill or saw and go to work?

A. Oh, yeah. There’s no doubt if something needs to get done and I’ve got to get dirty, I’ll do it … because everybody’s on a schedule, everybody’s on a deadline. If I’ve got to go pick up building materials from a supply house or help them out here when it’s 110 degrees to make sure that the framing portion’s right for the next subcontractor that comes in, I’ll do it.

Q. How does the weather play a part in your work?

A. The only time it really affects anything is when it’s raining a lot. When it’s 110, you live in south Georgia, so it’s part of our culture. (laughs)

Q. Does Columbus have enough good skilled help for contractors such as yourself?

A. It does. It has plenty of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, framers, drywall hangers, painters. And the network (of skilled workers) that I was fortunate enough to come into when I was working for Humphreys, all of those entities are still very viable. They are fantastic subcontractors. I think that the day and age we’re in a little bit, too, everyone needs to have their insurances set. The worst thing is when someone comes in and portrays themselves as a contractor, and they don’t pull permits or they don’t have insurance, then something happens and no one can get in touch with them. That’s not my philosophy at all. All of my subcontractors have insurance certificates. They all have workman’s comp policies. Everybody’s covered. I think from a (property) owner’s standpoint, that’s a huge risk that they don’t have to take because they know that all of the provisions are set.

Q. How does a homeowner check to see if a contractor is legit?

A. Anyone right now can look up on the Secretary of State website and they will have them listed as a general contractor. It should pull up and have who they are, if they’re residential, if they’re light commercial, if they’re a full general contractor. It gives specifics like that.

Q. And then there is the online site, Angie’s List?

A. We’re not a part of Angie’s List. But I think Angie’s List actually pre-qualifies contractors. I think for the homeowner, if they’re looking for someone and they become a member, they can see who’s pre-qualified and who has their insurance. It gives them a better ability to know that the contractor is legitimate.

This story was originally published October 8, 2016 at 10:03 PM with the headline "Casey Carver builds contracting career with skill, relationships."