Hight-Jackson Embarks on New Era

The plan never called for Brian Jackson to assume a leadership role in the family business.

“I don’t ever remember having a conversation with my dad [Gary Jackson] about coming and running the company,” he said.

But, as a civil engineer, Brian Jackson was certainly capable of making a few plan revisions.

An Air Force Academy graduate with eight years of service as a C-130 navigator, Jackson joined Hight-Jackson Associates in 2007 as vice president of engineering. He was named partner in 2009.

Today, Jackson is a little more than six months into working under a new title at the Rogers architecture and engineering firm — president.

It’s part of a significant change in the principal leadership of the company. The shuffle came about last summer with an eye toward expanding and improving upon a solid foundation of client advocacy and exceptional service.

Gary Jackson, 70, has transitioned from CEO to director of the company. He joined the architectural firm Charles W. Hight and Associates in Coffeyville, Kan., in 1971, became partner in 1974, and that same year opened the branch office Hight-Jackson Associates in Rogers as its sole practitioner.

“Obviously, my days are numbered,” he joked. “We just don’t know what that number is. But it’s time to look to new leadership that will carry it on from here.”

Today, the firm employs 25 and produces a workload of more than $100 million in construction projects each year.

“Gary is to the point where he deserves retirement,” said Ron Shelby, who joined Jackson at the Rogers office in 1976 and is now the company’s new CEO. “So you get to the point where you say, ‘How do we transition this without losing the touch?’”

That touch has helped Hight-Jackson build a well-established reputation with repeat clients throughout the four-state region.

“I think Gary has laid down a really good foundation at that firm,” said Chris Schnurbusch, a division manager at Crossland Construction Co. in Rogers. His company has teamed with Hight-Jackson on numerous projects, including the Arend Arts Center, Tiger Athletic Complex and Central Park Elementary School, all in Bentonville. “Most of those folks over there have been there a long time and they’ve operated in the same, consistent manner that they always have.”

The firm’s industry niche? Even with a portfolio that reflects experience with a wide variety of project types and sizes, Hight-Jackson will always be closely associated with its work on public school facilities.

“They get their share of the K-12 market and they have excelled at it,” said Sam Hollis, president and co-founder of Milestone Construction Co. in Springdale. “Other projects they have done well, but certainly K-12 has been good for them.”

A recent list of school projects designed by Hight-Jackson includes high schools in Siloam Springs, Van Buren, Prairie Grove, Rogers (Heritage) and Carthage, Mo. The company is also part of the design team for the $96 million Fayetteville High School renovation project.

“There is no doubt that [K-12 schoolwork] is our wheelhouse, so to speak,” Brian Jackson said. “I feel like in this region there is no one that can compete with us.”

But the company doesn’t want to be pigeonholed. While continuing to work in the area of K-12 design, the goal of the firm is to communicate to its long-term partners in education, as well as clients in all markets, that it has the experience, the tools and the talent to design almost anything.

“The talent that we’ve got in our studio now comes from a lot of different places,” Jackson said. “And this [transition] process is getting us ready to make a big push [in responsibility] to the folks who we have working for us. Because we probably are as talented as we’ve ever been.”

 

Meshing New Ideas

Jackson said of the core values that have helped Hight-Jackson flourish in Rogers for nearly four decades, chief among them is being the client’s No. 1 advocate.

Gary Jackson said that’s how the company was built.

“If the client is not happy, you’ve not done a good job,” he said. “Clients have budgets and they also have expectations, and sometimes it’s a real balancing act.”

The goal of the transition has been to mesh the new ideas of the staff with the firm’s proven process of doing business.

“When you can do that and bring that kind of creative talent into … a stable process that’s a proven process, it creates an environment where they learn from us and we are able to learn from them,” Brian Jackson said. “It’s been a great mesh.”

The collective changes in staff, software and leadership are re-energizing the firm. While the company has a solid reputation for its work with K-12 facilities, the team of designers at Hight-Jackson has also worked on other unique projects.

A recent client was EBV Explosives Environmental Co. in Joplin, Mo., an industry leader in demilitarization, incineration and disposal of munitions, explosives and explosive wastes.

Hight-Jackson developed the contemporary design for its corporate office and an operational building for the largest commercial disposal of explosive waste in the United States.

Another notable project was the Skyspace built along the Crystal Bridges Trail at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. Hight-Jackson was the architect of record for “The Way of Color,” created by world-renowned artist James Turrell.

Brian Jackson termed the collaboration as intense. Nabholz Construction Services in Rogers was the general contractor for the project, which leaned heavily on Shelby and principal Larry Perkin.

“That was a high-stress deal,” Jackson said. “We were given the task ‘Go build it,’ and the way that works is the artist says, ‘Yeah, you can build me a Skyspace, but I’m not putting my name on it unless I come and look at it.’ You get the whole thing built and then you just hold your breath for the man to come and bless it, so to speak.

“But to think we got to do something like that is great. We knocked it out of the park.”

 

New Technology

With Jackson assuming leadership of the company, there has been a shift to take advantage of the newest technology available in the industry. The design staff uses Revit, a Building Information Modeling software, to render in 3-D their latest designs for clients. When incorporated into the design of projects, it can help prevent delays or other problems in the field.

BIM, already established in the industry in places like New York and Los Angeles, is starting to become more integrated in design firms in Northwest Arkansas.

Shelby said Revit is an effective communication tool and an efficient way to design and coordinate all aspects of a project at various stages in the life cycle of a building, from concept to construction to decommissioning.

“It’s a little different concept than CAD [computer-aided design] drawing,” Shelby said, “but not much different than when you were drawing by hand. The way I learned to draw is you draw what you think happens two, six, 12 feet above a floor. You draw it and it conceptualizes the details. Revit allows you to put that in real time in a computer.

“The whole purpose of Revit is to help you eliminate some of the questions marks and variables. You get the ability to see a building in 3D and where the beams go, where the ducts are, where the conduit runs go, so you can potentially see where the conflicts happen.”

The technology gives Hight-Jackson the ability to better communicate a design to its clients, allowing them to see new designs before investing in a particular facility.

“What we have tried to do is bring it online slowly,” Jackson said. “You don’t just want to jump all-in at first. But that’s the great thing about this talent here. They’re young and they’re savvy with all of this.”

The firm’s studio environment is a mixture of 20- and 30-somethings, creative individuals who specialize in problem solving through design, using conceptual 3-D models, detailed construction documents and on-site construction administration.

They come from different areas and some of them have done internships at larger firms on the West Coast and in New York City.

“One of our young interns, she’s been here three years, graduated at the top of her architecture class at the University of Arkansas,” Jackson said. “She came to us and we were her No. 1 choice [for an employer]. That doesn’t happen to us a whole lot.”

And Shelby said part of his new role of overseeing the transition is to encourage the firm’s newer staff members.

“We need to make sure we don’t lose touch of what we were doing 20 years ago,” he said. “But we don’t want to get hung up on what we were doing 20 years ago. We’ve pretty much given the interns and new staff the chance to express themselves. What’s going to make us stronger is the ideas they bring to the table. I don’t mind them stubbing their toe. I just don’t want them to break their leg.”

 

Staying on Track

Shelby has invested more than 35 years with Hight-Jackson. He is eager about the prospect of leading the company’s continued growth as its CEO.

“My role is to, I guess, make sure the train stays on the tracks,” he said. “I’ll let them decide which track they want to go down.”

Jackson said one of the big tracks the company will follow is to continue funneling more responsibilities to the design staff.

“It’s been really fun to watch the transition, to see who is stepping up and taking that responsibility,” he said. “It’s a different mindset. We want to continue to grow the next three to five years to where there will be more owners involved as we continue the transition process. That’s going to be a big part of it.”

Shelby said the younger Jackson’s traits as a people person, in addition to his military background, make him a natural fit for a leadership position within the company.

Jackson understands the dynamics of managing people and managing projects.

“From the standpoint of implementing a project and getting it moving, we’ve got the talent to make those kinds of decisions,” Shelby said. “Brian is the catalyst for getting it going.”

And dad thinks it will be a natural fit.

“I never did sit him down and lecture him on how to run a business,” Gary Jackson said. “But he has watched how the firm was run and he has observed.

“I have absolutely no doubt we will continue on under the people who are taking control.”