BizCONSTRUCTION

continued from page 147 The early part of the trip was what the BFL executives would have expected. They visited projects. They spoke with project managers and superintendents. They asked about each other’s businesses. “We’re asking questions about their projects and how they do things, how they buy stuff, how they estimate, what software they’re using, what project management they use,” Brav said. “We’re just kind of comparing notes about how we do business and how they do business – talking shop.” 148 BizTucson

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Summer 2018

The group stopped first in Calgary, Alberta, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to visit some JV Driver projects. The next day they visited Edmonton, Alberta, and then Vancouver, British Columbia, home to an impressive portfolio of JV Driver Group projects – including the Olympic Village for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. “I was looking for things they were doing such as safety. I grabbed a couple of their safety cards that they had on site,” Larson said. “At this point, we were really looking at this as a joint venture.”

What Brav and Larson didn’t know was that the JV Driver representatives on the tour were all division presidents, not project managers. They found that out when they exchanged business cards at the end of the tour in Vancouver. At that point, Brav said, “we knew they were taking us very seriously and they wanted to make the best impression – otherwise why would you bring the top guys from your company? And from their perspective, they wanted their top guys to know who we were.” Brav said his takeaway was that if the two companies got involved in a www.BizTucson.com