CDI Prioritizes Relationships

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Building relationships has been the key to success for CDI Contractors LLC, and it has produced visable results throughout Northwest Arkansas.
In 2004, Matt Bodishbaugh, vice president, and Bob Laman, director of marketing, opened the CDI office in Northwest Arkansas without an actual office. They just held meetings with their laptops wherever it was convenient. They interviewed their first employee in a Barnes & Noble Booksellers. But it didn’t take them long to get in the game.
In the office’s first full year during 2005, CDI handled enough projects to bring in $20 million in revenue. In 2006, business spiked 214 percent and the office had $62.7 million in revenue.
“We’re not trying to be the biggest,” Bodishbaugh said. “We have never measured success by revenue or by sales volume. We just want our fair share of the marketplace and want our customers to come back to us. That’s what we have right now.”
CDI, founded in 1987, is headquartered in Little Rock. Still, CDI believed it needed an office just 200 miles away.
“CDI has been able to work in Los Angeles and Florida just fine out of Little Rock, but for Northwest Arkansas, you’ve got to be here,” Laman said. “I think the competitiveness of the market and the subcontractor market means you’ve got to be right here.”
“That’s the commitment that we think it takes. You have to have the boots on the ground and the management up here.”
Bodishbaugh said his mantra is avoiding the headaches and bad experiences clients have had with other contractors. He attempts this through a proactive relationship to understand the client’s goals.
“When you’re building a new building, usually it’s a time of something positive going on in your business. You’re growing, you’re entering a new market, developing a new facility, it ought to be a time of celebration.”
CDI Focus
CDI works almost exclusively in the design-build market. Bodishbaugh said all of the work done out of his office so far has been hand-picked contracts, and for that, he is thankful.
“The market has been good enough to allow us to do it, and we plan on continuing to do it,” he said. “Obviously, if there is a market downturn, you do what you need to do to keep your volume. But we haven’t seen any signs of that for our market sector.”
Bodishbaugh said he doesn’t want to be stuck just interpreting blueprints and technical specifications. CDI wants to be hired at the same time the designer is. That allows the company to work hand-in-hand with designer to better understand their intent, as well as the owner’s desires.
The design-build method CDI uses is better for the owners, Bodishbaugh said. Pre-construction may last four to 12 months, rather than having an architect work on the design for a year before contractors have a peek at the designs. In “hard bids,” the owner had no control over subcontractors and suppliers. Here, CDI seeks bids from subs and suppliers, so the entire team selects those who will best meet their goals.
Unlike hard bidding where the contractors may not know day to day what jobs they’ll have, CDI’s involvement in the pre-construction phase gives Bodishbaugh a better grasp on his company’s forecast.
He said CDI will not, and doesn’t care to, keep up 200 percent growth. Keeping one eye on growth management, Bodishbaugh said he won’t be seen chasing every project up and down Interstate 540.
Revenue of $60 million to $100 million per year is a comfortable range for his office in Northwest Arkansas, he said.
“You’re always trying to balance the marketing valve of work acquisition with the production valve of work execution,” Bodishbaugh said. “When we do that job well, it’s nice steady growth.”
Bodishbaugh’s business plan is to seek relationships with potential clients, especially those with a repetitive building program.
“You may not have a building need today, but six months from now or six years from now, I want to be the guy that you call when you do,” he said.
CDI Projects
The best example of CDI’s success with relationships has been Metropolitan National Bank. Lunsford Bridges, CEO for Metropolitan, and CDI’s CEO Bill Clark had known each other well. At the time, CDI had been in Northwest Arkansas for about a year, and when Metropolitan wanted to expand into Benton and Washington counties, Bridges knew who to call.
CDI is finishing 10 bank locations for Metropolitan, worth about $31 million.
Bodishbaugh has nine active projects on his board at the moment. Three of them are at the University of Arkansas, accounting for nearly $80 million in business.
CDI is working on the Willard J. Walker Hall, the graduate school building for the Walton College of Business — a $16 million project. The company is also working on the J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. Center for Academic Excellence, which will require a $23 million building. Both projects are due for completion in June.
The office’s largest project, financially, is the 600-room Maple Hill Residence Hall, priced at $40 million. The building is scheduled to open in August.
Bodishbaugh said working on a university campus presents unique challenges, such as working in close proximity to the students and having little lay down space to work and keep equipment, but CDI’s relationship with the UA has made it easier.
“Every subsequent project you get, it’s easier to take care of because of that relationship with their people and our people is just that much tighter.”
Landing the contracts, plus his largest contract to date, with the university isn’t just about business. These projects are more personal for Bodishbaugh.
Although he didn’t grow up playing with erector sets like many other contractors, his father was a mechanical contractor. Bodishbaugh gravitated to a related field and studied civil engineering at the UA.
“I was technically oriented, and that seemed to be the discipline that allowed you to get outside the most, rather than being chained to a drawing board,” he said.
“One thing that makes the university such a gratifying client is coming back as a professional and contributing to that campus. There’s a lot of pride there.”
CDI has worked diversity into its portfolio with an emphasis in the hospitality, retail and institutional sectors.
“In order for you to grow an organization in this small geographic area, you can’t just decide you’re going to be a specialist in industrial buildings,” Bodishbaugh said. “You have to have expertise and wider range of construction types just because there’s not enough volume here if all you’re going to do is one sector.”
CDI’s first project in Northwest Arkansas was a $6 million renovation of the former Washington Regional Hospital into the Arkansas State Veterans Home. That was the catalyst for the company, which also completed the $6 million Dillard’s department store in Rogers and the $5.7 million Clear Creek Tower, where CDI has its offices.
Bodishbaugh accredits CDI’s success to his team of twelve in the office.
“I’ve got some technical geniuses on this team, that are much smarter than I am, and all I try to do is get them hooked up with other technical geniuses and give them the resources they need to be successful,” he said. “I get out of the way and let them carry me along.”
Project managers, such as Jeff Borgsmiller, have to be multi-talented. Borgsmiller, from day one, is working with clients on the project — a job he takes personally.
“I wanted to work for someone where I could look at myself in the mirror in the morning and be proud of what I’m doing, and I found exactly that at CDI,” he said.
“I’ve always said, ‘We’re more about relationships than we are buildings,'” Bodishbaugh said. “We’re more about solving problems for customers than we are about bricks and mortar. The bricks and mortar are a byproduct of us solving a customer’s problems.”