“Being in the construction industry is so fulfilling,” said Jaime Quello, The Unified Group’s 2022 Construction Forum MC. “How cool is it to drive down a road, point to a building and say, ‘I built that’? We’re building history.”

The Charleston event brought together more than 40 like-minded professionals within The Unified Group’s member companies to share ideas and concepts with each other.

The first morning consisted of member presentations regarding Supply Chain Strategies and a full group discussion on Bid Letter Clauses for Price Escalation and Natural Disasters. However, the highlight of the day was the afternoon tour of Cullum Mechanical Construction, Inc.’s corporate office, pipe shop and sheet metal shop. Members from different nationwide companies walked through Cullum’s facilities, asked questions, offered suggestions and learned what Cullum employees do day to day.

“It was nice to walk through a company that’s split up similarly to us,” said Pansy Romo of Intech Mechanical. “They had a lot of great employees who enjoy being a part of the Cullum family.”

After a fun night of getting to know members in a more casual environment, attendees came back the next day eager to continue learning. Prefabrication and BIM was the hot topic during the second day. With nearly two hours of presentations and discussions, three members represented their companies by showcasing their BIM and prefabrication capabilities for sheet metal, plumbing and piping. Other topics included Conceptual Budgeting and Historical Pricing, Employee Issues and a “biggest challenge” breakout.

On the final day of the meeting, Project Turnover was the favored topic. Two companies dove into how they manage the process of project turnover from estimating, to the project manager, to the executive team. In general, many members initially expressed challenges with this process, and other companies responded with their positive experiences.

“Being my first time attending, I was really pleased with the open and honest conversation between everyone,” said Ryan Ress of Peterson Sheet Metal. “It seems like everyone just wants to help each other.”

In all, The Unified Group’s 2022 Construction Forum was an extremely successful event for all attendees, allowing them to return to their companies and implement new processes and ideas.