Carpenter & Operator Brasfield & Gorrie

All right, Mitchell, thank you so much for putting yourself out there for our veteran job seekers. Like we say at Veteran Hiring Solutions, people don't follow companies. They follow leaders. So if we, we hear a little bit about your background, what got you to this moment at the company and your responsibilities at the organization?

Yep. So I, I've been in interested in building stuff and taking stuff apart since a very young age. My, I drove my parents crazy. I would take all my toys and some of my dad's tools apart and I was, I was probably 20 years old before I figured out how to put them back together. It's probably a pretty painful process for him. But I didn't plan to go to college, planned to be a truck driver all through high school. Got out of high school, went to college one time, liked it pretty good, so I decided I could spend 4 years there. So I went to Georgia Southern University, graduated with a construction management degree, graduated in 2008, wanted to go build houses. 2008 was not the time to build houses, so I came to work in construction. Commercial construction for a company called Brasfield Gorrie. Greatest thing that ever happened to me, to be honest with you. I've been here for 19 years. Back then, we didn't really have a lot of programs, so I entered the company as a carpenter and worked on a wall crew, my first job, and just kind of bounced around doing concrete carpentry for about 6 or 7 years, worked my way up to carpenter foreman. Um, and from there up to assistant superintendent, and now I'm a general superintendent or vice president of field operations at Brassfield and Gorrie. So what I do is I manage our self-performed scopes of work. Most general contractors don't do a lot of self-performed. They really, like the name says, they contract everything out. So they kind of subcontract to other companies to go build a building. Kind of like a home builder would do, but on a, on a grander scale. So we actually do a lot of self-performed work. I have a lot of carpenters, laborers, foremen, operators, concrete finishers that work for me in Georgia. And we go and we build buildings. We do the foundation concrete work. We do the place and finish. We do formwork. So we form all the columns and walls. And decks and place and finish all those ourselves with our people. We also do site work. So we, we do the grading on several of our jobs. Also, we don't do all of them. We sub some of them out, but the piece of the company that I manage is that piece. So I manage all of our craft workforce and our self-performed scopes of work. I help create plans for that, for those projects. And and just help the project teams along during the project to execute those jobs.

Well, that's great, you know, and you're really the story, right? Because we're trying to talk about the opportunity to have a career here, come in as a carpenter or a heavy equipment operator, learn the right way to do things, the Brasfield way, right? And then grow. And it's great to see that you've done that yourself. As the person responsible for these trades, you know, I think we're going to talk about the carpenter role and the heavy equipment operator. Are these positions located in a specific location, or they can be in certain areas because they're traveling a lot? How does that work on the front end? And then we'll talk about the role and the training and everything.

So at Brasfield Gorrie, we have both. We have a heavy civil division that does water treatment plant work and bridge work, road work. Power plant work. And yeah, they do a lot of traveling. They're out of Birmingham, but they do do a lot of traveling. The people I manage are in Georgia. Most of our work, a lot of our work, almost all of it is in and around Atlanta, within 40 miles of Atlanta in any direction. But yeah, we, we, we stay pretty local in the Georgia world. We, we do— Braswell Gorrie does have offices all over the Southeast, from Dallas, Texas to Miami, Florida to, uh, Raleigh, North Carolina, and everywhere in between. So we, we are all over the Southeast, but the people I manage are in Georgia.

Okay, so we're going to focus on that Atlanta market. And as far as the carpentry role, you know, my grandfather was a tanker in the Korean War, came home, and he was a carpenter the rest of his life. So this resonates with me. What's the expectations of skill for this person coming in? And then what's the training, onboarding, upskilling look like?

Yeah, so, um, as a carpenter, you should know basically how to read a tape measure. We don't expect you to be a full-blown concrete deck carpenter or formwork carpenter, um, or interior carpenter. We can teach you everything we need to know— you need to know. I have around 300 carpenters that work for me in Georgia. And they're some of the best in the world. I would, I would put them against anybody. I've had them more than once after my 19 years make me look silly when I'm trying to figure something out over there with a calculator and they pull a string line out and figure it out in about 2 seconds. I'm saying that to say that we have really good trainers in those people. They're very passionate about— if you can get out there and work hard, then you will fit in very well and people will be very passionate about training you. And if you're like me and most of the people that work at Brasfield Gorrie, you will get out there and you will find some of your best friends out there pretty quick and you'll become part of the team. And you know, those 6 or 8 guys and that foreman you work with every day will be a very close-knit group that has very focused goals. and your day-to-day will look like, you know, helping each other out and figuring out how to do stuff in a more efficient manner and getting stuff done.

So with the onboarding training, is that kind of like the way I was trained? Right? I was out there with my grandfather, my father, my uncles, and, you know, they were teaching me the way live while we were there. Hey, this is how you do it. This is not the right way. So is it more like that, having that senior person there kind of helping you grow live while you're on the sites?

Yep. So that to me, I'm, you know, you can ask anybody in the world what the best kind of training is, and they're going to tell you on-the-job training. So your first day will look like you'll go to a job, you'll get signed up, you'll get assigned to a crew and introduced to those people, and you will be put on that crew and you'll start working with those guys. Those guys within 5 minutes are going to be like, okay, this is what we're doing today. This is how you need to do this. You know, and they're going to give you a task that you're probably going to have to ask a few questions about, but they're going to be standing there to answer them and you're going to progress and progress. And, you know, I always tell people, you know, if you do the same thing for 2 days, the third morning when you come in, don't ask what we're doing today. Go get started. You know what I mean? And you need to learn from what you do today. Take it to tomorrow and do that your whole life and your career. And you'll get a pretty good resume built up in your head of what you know how to do. And that's the best way to do it. We do have a lot of formal training. We have NCCER carpentry classes that we provide to some of our carpenters. And those are beneficial. That teaches you things like, you know, your carpenter foreman, when you're out there forming up columns and you've got concrete coming in 2 hours, he may not go sit you down at a picnic table and teach you the Pythagorean theorem. But, you know, in those classes, we will sit you down and teach you those things and understand how to square stuff up and some engineering math and stuff like that.

So it's a good balance between the academic and the OJT.

Yes.

That's great. And I think I like that the most because what people don't realize getting out of the military is that camaraderie, that close-knit physical camaraderie working out in the real world. Solving real-world problems in real time and growing there. And so I think that, you know, if you're a veteran looking at this now, that's probably one of the biggest things to think about is what do you want your day to look like? Who do you want your day to be with? And what do you want to accomplish? Do you want to see— do you want to see the accomplishments of the day? I work on a computer, so I don't get to do that. I don't get to see the end results of my actions, where here you do.

Yeah, I mean, I'm really skeptical to tell people how many people that work here because it feels like you're talking about a giant company. But your day-to-day life is gonna, you know, we have 250 job sites, usually around that number going on at one time. These job sites all feel like a small business. You have a superintendent out there that runs that job. You have a project management team that runs that job with the superintendent. And they kind of run it how they want to run it. They, every job has a different personality that you can, you can flow up to the team that's there and read into both sides of that. But it really feels like you work for a small business because you work for that job site. And you know, even further down than that, you kind of start to feel like you work for that crew that you're on. You know, you're out there with 6 or 8 guys and you're in charge of, you know, decks or columns or whatever that scope is. And you're out there with those guys every day doing different tasks all day, every day with them. And, you know, y'all become a pretty close-knit team. You get to the point where, you know, you, you reach down and you think you're out of nuts and bolts and you feel somebody's hand drop, drop nuts and bolts in your pouch. I mean, you, you start flowing like that with you. I love that. It's, it's, it's a pretty cool thing. And I I'll be honest, in my new position, I kind of miss that. I, I would be a carpenter for the rest of my life if they would pay me what they pay me to do what I do today. But it's my—

yeah, I mean, talking about it makes me think, it makes me miss building houses for my family or putting new roofs on and just the camaraderie behind it and the, I don't know, just the way the men interact, you know, it's just a good time. And then what about the heavy operator role? Is that similar to the carpenter role where most of the roles are located in that Atlanta vicinity? Um, you're look— and then what, what experience is necessary for them to apply to the role? And then how would you upskill those people?

Yeah, so I mean, I do want to say before we get off too far off of Carpenter, but this also ties into the operator role, these are entry-level positions. And to me, what an entry-level position means is There's more places to go than that, right? I'm not hiring people that I want to be a carpenter for the rest of their life. I want to hire people that want to be a carpenter, a carpenter foreman. They get out here and really get interested in field engineering, which is our surveyors who go around and lay out every column, wall, slab edge, door, everything that goes into a job. You know, if they see that and like that, there, there's places to go everywhere. And Raspo and Gorrie is truly a performance-based company. We don't care how long you've been here. We care about how fast you learn, what you know, and your attitude. And you will— you can grow that way for sure. You know, we have people that always want to know, how long am I going to be in this position? How long am I going to be in this position? That's totally up to you. We need to promote you faster than you're ready to be promoted. So that's the deal, is when are you ready to be promoted? We need those upper-level guys. But as far as the operators go, we have a lot of equipment that, that does not take a ton of experience to operate. We have dump trucks, we have rollers, we have skid steers. And so we have a good training ground for operators, right? Yeah, it would be great if you had some operating experience. We're really just looking for a guy that is intelligent. Can learn, understands, and cares about safety, that wants to come out here and learn how to do stuff. So we, we do have a very— we are currently developing a training program for operators to, you know, have a, have a growth plan for them to take a guy that's never operated anything and have a plan for him to be able to operate everything. You know, that, that back to the on-the-job training, we do have a focus on that to where we're You know, we're training, training foremen to be trainers, right? We're talking about, hey, how do you teach this guy to go run a giant excavator on this job with people everywhere? You know, you go find a safe place where he can operate it. You show him the basics and give him some time out there with nobody around to kind of figure that thing out and learn. And then you give him simple tasks to do with that. And those, as he does those simple tasks, he learns and learns and learns and eventually gets to the point where he's mastered that piece of equipment and he can go do anything with it. And that's kind of the plan there. So entry-level-wise, you know, you don't need to know much. We have pieces of equipment that if you're capable of calling an Uber or driving to work, then you're capable of starting to learn how to run those pieces of equipment. I'm not going to say you've mastered them, but You know, you're capable of going out there and getting on a roller and learning to check the oil every morning, grease it, and understand, you know, hey, I got to look back every time I back up. There could be a guy walking behind me, or, you know, I've got to learn to nod this guy across in front of me so I don't run him over, and that sort of thing.

So for me, you know, it's the service to country creates a high-performing, disciplined purpose-driven human. And it's so hard when you come out to find that role, to follow that purpose, to continue to grow, to continue to challenge yourself, and find a safe leader and group to do that in. And this is such a great opportunity as a carpenter, as an operator, wherever they may land at Brasfield, is it's about you as a person first. And then we're going to upskill and we're going to build on you and we're going to mentor and develop you. That is so uncommon right now. And to have an opportunity like this, if you're in that Atlanta market and you're into the construction and the physical work, which is so rewarding to us, this is that unique opportunity to come in, get the upskill, get the mentorship, and grow and develop your career like you, 19 years in. I think it's just great.

I mean, I, I always tell people Every interview I sit in, everybody wants to know how to be successful. And, you know, I boil it down like this. If you want to be successful, people need to like you. If you show up late, people are not going to like you. If you're sitting there looking at your phone while everybody else is working and being lazy, people are not going to like you. But if you get there 15 to 30 minutes early every morning, say good morning to everybody and have a real good attitude and try to carry on a conversation with people. And you work your butt off and you learn and you take things you've learned yesterday to tomorrow and you try to take on more and more, people are going to like you. That's just a real good standard for how you're doing is, you know, what you want is you want your superintendent calling me and saying, hey, I'm taking Joe to the next job with me. And I'm saying, well, I've got Joe scheduled to go and we're starting to fight over Joe. You know what I mean? Because, yeah, somebody you want to be around, somebody you want on your job because he cares.

Yeah. Well, that— I think that's where we close it. I feel like we really covered the roles, but most importantly, the community, the culture, and the investment the company's willing to do for the right human. Right. To give them a real job and a real career. Is there anything you want to put out there before we end the conversation that we haven't talked about?

No, I think I probably talk too much.

Never. No, I mean, it's so— in the military, I say it was a bad Marine, a good Marine, and it came down to my platoon sergeant. I had a really bad leader at the beginning. I did not do well in the Marine Corps. That person left, and I was promoted twice in a year and a half, meritoriously. And so we as the military know how important leadership is. And so your communication, your openness, you talking about how much you really care and want to invest in these humans, that's what's everything to them. And so I really appreciate the openness. What we're going to do is we're going to get to work now. We're going to get this out to our community. And when we find those motivated individuals, we're going to send them to you.

All right. All right. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks.

Thank you.