A Conversation With ... Brandon Wall

You moved to Springfield in April to lead the local Nabholz office. Tell me about your background in the construction industry and how this opportunity came up.
This really began for me back in elementary school. I had a teacher who gave us an assignment to do a floor plan of our house, I think it was related to how would you escape in a fire, but it really sparked something inside me. I worked for an architecture firm as a teenager and then framed some houses during the summers and just really connected with being able to see something in the rear-view mirror when you go home at the end of the day that spoke to your effort. I went to college and studied construction management and then came back home to the Ozarks and was hired with Nabholz. It’s been a great company, and they’ve really put me on the edge of my experience and really forced me to grow in a great way. That’s what led me to go from Rogers to Fort Smith, [Arkansas] and lead an operation there, and then most recently to go from Fort Smith to Springfield.

What conversations are happening within Nabholz as a new administration comes in with President-elect Donald Trump? Are you pre-buying materials or looking at other measures to prepare for an increase in tariffs on foreign goods?
We have done pre-buying of commodities in the past. A few years ago, we invested in some fuel futures and that was to support a lot of our industrial and excavation equipment needs. That turned out to be a good move. We did see that pricing escalate in the market. Coming out of the COVID years, we saw so many escalations in material that we could have never anticipated. I’m very encouraged with the election result and some of the focus that Trump has had and historically has had about putting America first and nearshoring and reshoring manufacturing and industrial. I would expect to see more of the growth occurring as a result. But we certainly need to be smart about these tariffs because our neighbors to the north in Canada and down in Mexico, if we have trade tariffs on those, that could once again influence things like crude oil from Canada or the HVAC equipment or automobiles that are manufactured in Mexico. If they’re looking at a 25% tariff on that, then that’s going to have a negative impact to those commodities and resources that we need in our industry.

Another growing cost in your industry is labor. How are you developing the next generation of the industry, and also, how are you retaining workers and evaluating wages?
In 2020, there were close to half a million workers that left the industry or retired and we haven’t closed that gap since then. We don’t have the sufficient incoming workforce to replenish the people that are going to age out and retire, let alone just expanding to meet the demand that the industry will have in the future. We’re anticipating a lot of growth in the infrastructure market in the next three years. The numbers that we’ve seen are some of the highest volume in infrastructure work that we’ve ever had, and we’re managing that with half a million fewer workers that are needed nationwide. It underscores the importance of retaining the people that we have but also creating pathways for people to enter the market. Nabholz pioneered an apprenticeship program that was accredited by the Department of Labor and that was to help develop craftsmen and carpentry apprentices. We have a millwright apprenticeship program that we’re working on. We do partnerships with high schools for apprenticeship programs, so giving students early exposure to what the environment and the career path is in a safe way. And then partnerships with higher education, the universities, technical colleges – we’re trying to create pathways into workforce and from the workforce back into school so they can get degrees and associate degrees, if that’s their goal. As far as salaries go, we measure compensation every year with regional metrics and reports to ensure that we’re in the market and that we’re always competitive. These skilled trades are a very lucrative career for people.

You mentioned the explosive growth you’re seeing with infrastructure. What other industries or types of construction do you also anticipate growth in?
The infrastructure growth has been writing on the wall nationwide for a long, long time. A lot of deferred maintenance, if you will. We’re seeing a lot of (requests for qualifications) and pricing opportunities for a lot of water treatment. In the future, we’re also going to be seeing more of the bridge and overpass replacements. I think we’ll see the old infrastructure being replaced with new, more horizontal construction roads, bridges, repavement. Other markets that we anticipate will have growth is the health care market, higher education and then the private sector. We’re seeing a lot of growth from Amazon and some of these other large-scale shipping companies where they’re making more regional distribution. We’re seeing a lot of square footage come up in more local areas to get time for delivery shorter and shorter.

What are the future industry issues or trends that you are trying to solve or prepare for now?
We talked about workforce and I think technology is going to be one of the solutions for that. Nabholz has been around for 75 years. Communication wise, we started the company when the highest speed of communication was telegrams and typewriters. Now we’re even getting to these emerging technologies of headsets that can display information while you’re on a job site in real time. We have 360-degree photos, laser scanning that can create digital models and tag those models with information for maintenance of equipment. The technology in this field is really expanding and growing in exciting ways. I think prefabrication is an opportunity for us to become more efficient in our industry and to maximize the hands-on workforce that we have. But I also am paying attention to what I’m seeing about 3D printing. You might’ve seen video clips of robotic arms that are 3D printing walls out of concrete. That’s still in its early phases, but I think that that’s probably something we’re going to see more of in the future.