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CONSTRUCTION
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The Industry’s Newspaper Downtown Carrollton
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(210) 308-5800
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Volume 13
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Number 7
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JULY 2016
Ever evolving
Acing the test
When it comes to business, The Hooker Company Inc. embraces the theory of evolution.
Trinity’s Brad Bryant says “great people,” like Esmeralda Rodriguez in HR and office manager Zaira Maldonado, contribute to the company’s 10-year success.
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ow did The Hooker Company Inc. survive more than three decades in an ever-evolving construction industry? “We’ve evolved over the years,” president Gary Hooker says. “We’ve been in business 35 years so we’ve proven that we can survive, but that has required changes involving restructuring and focusing in different directions.” Gary and wife Jan Hooker established The Hooker Company Inc. in 1981 as a residential builder in East Texas. They soon shifted focus to commercial renovation, specializing in demolition and reconstruction of asbestos abatement projects and medical construction. In 1999, Hooker expanded into wireless commu-
nication infrastructure construction, cellular towers and microwave installations, which is currently the business’ bulk. Now it is time for another evolution. Under its HCI Equipment Services division, Hooker is providing mobile on-site equipment maintenance and repair. “We have done both preventative and repair maintenance for generators for approximately six years,” Gary says. “We felt there was a need for someone to provide maintenance to smaller contractors who don’t have their own facilities for preventative maintenance and minor to moderate repairs, things that might not necessarily require a dealer or a fullscale shop. We now provide that on the continued on Page 20
A
fter years of working in the commercial construction industry, Brad Bryant and Craig Hunt had an idea they wanted to test. What if they formed a company that would use both the drywall and plaster divisions equally to build a business? Would it succeed? Bryant and Hunt established Trinity Drywall & Plastering Systems in July of 2006 to find out if it could. “We were excited to try out our ideas and see if we could have a company that actually worked together in the drywall and plastering business rather than working against each other,” Bryant, Trinity’s president and CEO, says. “We felt like this would be a better way to do it; we had to go to market and maxi-
mize both fully. That way, we could complement each other and be successful.” They aced the test. With the company celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, Bryant and Hunt, now the company’s vice-president of business development, are humbled by Trinity’s success and steady growth. “We’ve been at our Fort Worth location all 10 years,” Bryant says. “There were just three of us the first day we started; currently, we’re up to approximately 450 to 500 employees. The same services we started with are the same services we offer today. It’s important to stay with what you know, and try to become excellent at it.” continued on Page 20
The renovation doctor is in
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iland Home Construction may be known for its residential projects throughout the Metroplex, but it is gaining notice for its commercial work as well. In fact, the doctor who hired Doug Miland and his team to finish out the The Balch Interventional Pain Clinic at 4319 Camp Bowie in Fort Worth was a previous residential client. “We had done a pretty deep remodel to Dr. Balch’s house a couple of years ago, and he liked us enough to bring us into doing this building once he bought it,” Miland says. “We’ve done other interior finish out work for doctor offices, and so we felt like we knew that end of the business pretty well. I guess you would call it a combination of many other jobs that we’ve done before. This was our largest job to date, so we’re excited about that.” The project was nine months in the making as Miland and the architect, a
family member of the client, zeroed in on the building’s architectural style. They also deliberated the clinic project’s scope: Connecting and renovating the former two-story art gallery with the adjacent one-story building, a former jewelry store. It turned out the project would consist of more than tearing down walls between the two spaces. “I believe the two-story part was built in the 1940s; it was a poured-inplace concrete wall building,” Miland says. “We were leaving as much of the original building there as we could, basically gutting the entire interior and adding new roof lines. It was a pretty extensive project.” Although the one-story building contained asbestos, it was limited to the drywall that was slated for removal. The glue underneath the floor caused a minor delay on the project’s front end, but The Balch Interventional Pain Clinic in Fort Worth is ready for business, thanks to a renovation that included new rooflines, ADA-compliant additions and a ventilation system.
continued on Page 20