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Business Lessons from a Founder

I have worked with and learned from amazing people on my journey – let's build together.

Ride the Wave: Week 1 Update

We’ve already hit the ground running with our Ride the Wave tour, and it has been a busy few days! I’m so glad to have the opportunity to meet with my teams again face-to-face, and you just can’t beat getting to see all of the great work they’ve been doing in person. The return from remote work can’t come soon enough! Our week started off strong on Monday, with a stop in Pontiac, Michigan to see the progress on Project Cougar, a regional distribution and fulfillment center for Amazon. Next, we went to New Windsor, New York, and University Park, Pennsylvania to visit the sites of two different parking garage projects.

Mapping a Path Back Downtown - Crain's Chicago

In spite of all the uncertainty that came with the past year, there is one thing I know to be true: working from home sucks. And it’s now time to get everyone back into the office as quickly and safely as possible. We have the tools to make this happen, and Clayco is proud to be setting an example for other companies as we begin to welcome our employees back to work on May 10th. My announcement was just featured in Crain’s Chicago Business’ “Chicago Comes Back” series that is focusing on how leading businesses in Chicago are planning and preparing for a new normal, as well as the return to the downtown corridor. You can read more here.

The Future of Work at Clayco

As more people are getting vaccinated for COVID-19 and returning to offices, they are being greeted by both physical and policy changes in the workplace. Before Clayco employees are all back, I wanted to do two things: thank them for their extraordinary performance this past year and let them know about some policy changes we’ve made that we think they’ll appreciate. Here are parts of the company-wide email I sent recently.

Recognizing the Women in Clayco

Clayco is more than just a design-building firm, we are strongly driven by social impact and what we can do to make a difference both Within and Beyond our Walls. We are well aware of the statistics related to women in construction. While women make up 47% of the U.S. workforce, they only make up 9% of the construction workforce. That is one of the reasons we are passionate about providing an equal opportunity for all and promote initiatives for our office and field to become more diverse and inclusive.

SCAD Spring Street

Working with the Savannah College of Art and Design is always rewarding because it is genuinely about combining the ART and SCIENCE of building. Even with the completion of SCAD Forty, there was still a need to meet the demand of SCAD Atlanta’s growing student population. That’s when discussions began to re-imagine an adjacent residence hall, Spring House. The design team of Mackey Mitchell Architects and our own Lamar Johnson Collaborative began working with SCAD in October 2018 and multiple options and iterations were studied before the current concept was selected.

Cooper Steel

Gary Cooper is the CEO and Chairman of the Board at Cooper Steel in Nashville, TN. Cooper Steel is a national leader in steel fabrication and erection and one of Clayco’s most valued subcontractors. Clayco and Cooper Steel have worked on projects together such as the Volkswagen Battery Plant and The Cubes in Alabama.

Business

The concept of earning is an instinct of mine

My first job was stamping cans at a little grocery market in exchange for candy at about 10 years old. The concept of earning was an early instinct of mine.

During my teen years, I had a car wash on my home driveway, after which I started doing small painting and odd jobs at neighbors’ homes for extra money, but mainly to avoid mowing my own yard by paying the kid down the street to do it. I could make more money doing the other jobs, which allowed me to pay him very little to do something I didn’t want to do that was much more time-consuming. Looking back, that was an entrepreneurial experience.