Competition Rising

Even though it's one of the oldest interior contracting companies in Chicagoland, J.C. Anderson is seeing unprecedented competition. The firm, which started as a plastering business in 1879, has found its niche in education, office, and light industrial interiors, but is looking to diversify as the number of contractors competing grows.
 
J.C. Anderson's Clint Hickman and Thomas Bean showed us around their Elmhurst office, complete with warehouse and basketball court, on Tuesday afternoon. Tom says projects that usually have just five bidders are reaching a dozen and he's even seen larger downtown projects with 26 different contractors bidding on the build-out. The contractor recently won a 48k SF assignment for the new TreeHouse Foods HQ in Oak Brook and a 60k SF space for the Dental Network of America.
We snapped Kevin Radoha  in the JC Anderson Boardroom with Clint and Tom. J.C. Anderson's 150  project managers and tradesmen complete about 2M SF of buildouts each year, accounting for about $100M in volume. It often performs work with DePaul University. With so much competition, J.C. Anderson is keeping prices down through "estimating right the first time" and getting all of its materials ordered and employees ready to go before starting a project so that it's done on time. Its goals coming out of the recession? Get into diversified projects like healthcare and some more industrial.

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