South Carolina-based design-build company Robbins Construction is celebrating its fifth anniversary in business this year. In its relatively short lifetime, this company has stayed busy by working on a breadth of interesting projects while continuing to diversify its market sectors and projects.
Director of Business Development, Thomas Robbins, is responsible for the development of new business opportunities for the company while managing their marketing efforts as well. Thomas was recently named among the ‘Best and Brightest 35 and Under’ in South Carolina by Charleston Business Magazine, this year.
The company continues to meet its goals through participating in exciting construction projects around its home area of North Charleston and beyond. In November 2023, the firm’s work on Park Circle Reimagined—a neighborhood revitalization project involving installing a community center, farmers market, baseball field, and the largest inclusive playground in the world for the city—was completed. The project is already considered a huge success, with children enjoying the new accessible playground and the various amenities being well-attended by the populace.
For its considerable efforts, the firm has also garnered recognition within the industry; earlier this year, Robbins Construction accepted the Gold Award for Special Structures & Landscapes from the Design Build Institute of America-Southeast Region for its work on the project.
The company has also been working on a great deal of big box retail store projects, including Floor & Decor locations across the southeast and other national retailers. Meanwhile, the preconstruction and business development sectors of Robbins Construction have been continually generating work in the multi-family and hospitality spaces, including breaking ground on a boutique hotel currently under construction.
Across various projects like these, the workforce is driven by what the company refers to as ‘The Robbins Approach.’ This is a mentality that leadership aims to inspire in its team members and is, essentially, the vision and mission of the company itself. The approach means unwavering commitment to excellence in every aspect of construction. This involves meticulous procedures, a commitment to safety, and executing projects with the owner’s best interests at heart. Every new job is an opportunity to demonstrate the core values of Robbins Construction and a chance to be an advocate for both the business and for the interests of clients.
This kind of personal interest that the company takes in its clientele has been key since day one. Thomas says that the business considers itself to be a relationship-based contractor and prides itself on doing both bigger projects and offering value and the ability to execute smaller projects as well.
“When you market that you’re a relationship-driven company, in my opinion, you can’t turn away any opportunity, no matter how small,” he says, and this is particularly true for clients who have helped you along the way to grow the business. Robbins offers small projects (Special Projects) as a service to all the company’s clients, and these special projects have been a consistent offering since the company’s inception. Where the special projects division excels is in working exclusively with certain clients to provide upfit services and maintaining relationships with the subcontractor base that excels in this size range.
Thomas affirms that Robbins Construction Group prioritizes communication and service to clients and believes you can always look to improve your team from one project to the next. “We don’t want to be one-and-done for a client,” he says. “We want to build their next 10 to 20 projects.” Lessons learned on a project become a kind of playbook for the company, wherein it outlines potential changes to make on the next project as well as insights into what worked well.
To this end, Robbins engages in weekly reporting, as opposed to the industry standard monthly reports. These have been shown to be convenient and detailed sources of information for clients on every project. Whether a design-build, design-assist, or bid project, clients are set up for success when they make their first sketch or build an initial budget. The team looks for inefficiencies in preliminary drawings to save the owner time and money before getting to the job site, and calls out potential field issues, which is helped by a preconstruction team that puts together one of the best design packages in the business.
Thomas notes that, although there has been slowdown in certain construction markets—especially on the speculative construction side—the company has kept busy with a steady pipeline of projects. It is helpful to have a diversified business while working for a varied client base, he says. Currently, the pipeline of work is extending into 2025 and likely will not decrease; however, in an election year and along with the cost of debt and interest rates, projects often get put on the backburner because of the uncertainty in the country. Once the election is over, however, it is usually back to business as normal.
In any market situation, Robbins Construction makes sure to keep a focus on safety, and for its efforts in this regard, the firm was awarded the 2024 Gleaming Star safety award by the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation earlier this summer for work toward safety and health in its internal culture.
Robbins Construction has set strong growth goals spanning the next five to six years, and it will be looking to make these goals even more rigorous to challenge its team. The company currently has plans to introduce a new office in Q4 of 2024 in North Carolina, in an opportunity to bring on experienced workers familiar with its work. Thomas says that the North Carolina market is very strong right now with the number of projects going on outside of Raleigh, within the Piedmont Triad, and in Charlotte, with lots of people moving to these areas and to Charleston. “We see this as a strategic move for the company to expand our footprint and it will be important for the business to establish a presence in those areas while we break ground on preconstruction projects over the rest of 2024,” says Thomas.
An out-of-state expansion with another office will open more opportunities for work and bring on more talent with the broadening of the labor pool. Although Charleston is a busy place, not every worker is keen to move there, so a new office will allow the company to bring on bright, experienced people that may not want to relocate.
In the five-year period since Robbins Construction began, the company has surpassed every goal it has set for itself. Thomas believes that the business has been fortunate enough to bring on extremely experienced and diverse people to work on incredible and rewarding projects. Having a workforce with these kinds of workers helps a company grow with increased and more diverse work opportunities, as well as hit growth and revenue targets.
To be sure, Robbins Construction has seen wonderful clients, employees, and opportunities come into its offices. The goal for the company is that it wants its people to be happy, enjoy what they do, and be proud of working there. “We’re building a great culture here and it will continue to improve as the company continues on,” says Thomas Robbins.
