The Right Moves
Linde Construction, Inc. makes its mark in Southern California
What do you do when you have a young company growing into a success in the fertile soil of the Southern California construction market? Some would be content to stay the course, to not rock the boat. However, Chris and Amber Linde of Linde Construction, Inc. charted a different path to make their company leaner and more competitive than ever, moving away from self-performing work and toward becoming a general contractor.
“We’re continuing with the tenant improvement work as an ongoing revenue stream while we transition to becoming a true general contractor, subbing out and managing instead of self-performing,” says Chris, who is the company’s Vice President. “We’re finishing up a lot of the projects we touched on when we were profiled in the Fall/Winter 2018 issue of The Who’s Who in Building & Construction. Now we’re working on more data facilities and retail centers, and we’re starting to move into the Los Angeles market with multifamily developments.”
Learning the Ropes
Linde Construction’s history is short but promising. Formed in 2016 by married couple Chris and Amber in Montclair, California, the minority- and woman-owned business swiftly grew from two to 20 employees. In the early days, Chris and Amber worked out of their house, hiring labor for jobs as need demanded. The jobs that came in the door were small at first—tasks like removing and replacing carpet, installing doors or windows and commercial painting.
In early 2017, Linde Construction began landing larger jobs. The company was subcontracted to complete two projects—a $700,000 tenant improvement at an infectious disease center in Claremont and the $1.3 million Rockefeller Group Professional Center office building in Rancho Cucamonga. Both jobs were completed on time and within budget, serving as a springboard for greater success for the company.
“We’re just about to get started with some new multifamily developments,” Chris says. “In Glendale, we’re working on a 26-unit multifamily development next to the old Seeley’s Furniture building.” The roughly $10 million project will feature upscale live-work apartments. “We’re working extremely closely with the client, which is someone I made a connection with at my old firm where I was a senior superintendent. We’ll be the general contractor managing subcontractors. The job is entirely subbed out.”
Living Large
While the small jobs provided Chris and Amber a means to get their business up and running, moving on to larger projects has always been the goal.
“We see a lot of people doing big projects,” says Nick Jacobs, who came on board earlier this year as Project Manager for Linde Construction. “We’re ready and able to take on those projects.”
Linde Construction recently finished a 36,000-square-foot block building in Garden Grove for Charter Communications and is currently working on a 20,000-square-foot, $2.2 million tenant improvement project in Redlands.
“We’ve actually gotten smaller in terms of our workforce, now that we’re no longer self-performing most of the work,” Chris says. “Our employee count has shrunk, but we are still doing the same volume for now. The Seeley project will definitely bump us up as far as our regular volume.”
The move to being a licensed general contractor is an incremental one. The primary jobs still being self-performed are plumbing and wall assembly, along with drywall and taping.
“Outside of those, we are trying to convert everything over to the subcontractors,” Chris says. “Some of the plumbing gets turned over as well. In the Seeley project, for example, the plumbing will be complex and time-consuming, so we subbed that out also.”
As Linde Construction has taken a step back from self-performing, it has allowed the company to take on higher-value projects, increasing its sales numbers.
“Last year, we were self-performing 80% of everything,” Chris says. “We’d been doing 100 or more projects every year, mostly tenant improvement work. Since we started moving into being a general contractor, it’s been more like 20 projects this year but each at a higher value. We’re currently at $5 million to $7 million in total sales.”
The relationship between Linde Construction and The Blue Book Network® has been very beneficial for the company during this transitional phase, Chris says. In his experience, the networking organization has been an exceptional source for building a base of reliable subcontractors, as well as opening doors to finding new clients.
“We know anyone who’s in The Blue Book is definitely qualified and can execute,” Nick agrees. “We have a very good relationship with our Blue Book representative. He connects us with industry professionals and contractors he says fit well with us.”
A Plan for Continued Growth
While Chris and Amber are pleased with the success of Linde Construction, one area they would like to improve is having a stable of repeat clients.
“We’ve had a lot of one-and-dones with clients,” Chris says. “They’re very happy with the work, but they’ve usually been one-off clients who are just anxious to get their space done, not someone we can convert into an ongoing client. We’re trying to build a solid client base. That’s part of our plan for growth.”
The plan for growth has been proceeding well, with the evolution to pure general contracting coming ahead of schedule. Still, there are more benchmarks and landmarks ahead, and Chris and Amber have goals for both the short-term and long-term future of their company.
“In the next few years, we would like to be dabbling in more mixed-use multifamily,” Chris says. “We’ve done a lot of projects to build our portfolio of work and we know we have a lot to offer. Eventually, we’d like to be one of the top 100 general contractors in the state. And eventually, we’d like to start dabbling in our own real estate development ventures as well, but that’s in the five- to 10-year plan. In the short term, we want to reach $15 million to $20 million per year in revenue and cap it at that—we don’t want to outgrow our culture.”
Linde Construction started out as a family business and it still is. That small, close-knit feel is something Chris and Amber are anxious to retain even as their company grows. They believe their business’ size and culture are a benefit—one more selling point to offer to potential clients.
“Everybody has their pitch out there,” Chris says. “We’re a young firm. We’re small and family owned. We’re young, we’re aggressive, we’re trying to execute as quickly as possible, to turn over something on time and on budget that both Linde Construction and the client can be proud of.”
“We’re building interesting things we can be proud of,” Nick says. “We’ve got a lean team, and that forces us to think of efficiency right from the start. How much value can we bring to the client? We’re not married to any old ways, which lets us stay on top of the innovation curve and be quicker and more cost-effective.”