During trying times, fairness always serves well. – Ryan D. Mayer, Owner
Developing strong connections is the best way forward
Construction projects of any kind are a major investment, so Mayer Building Company strives to provide reliable, high-quality service and expert guidance from the moment they meet a new client. Their capabilities span all aspects of commercial general contracting, retail construction, historic renovations, design/build projects and more. The team’s years of collective experience and dedication ensure they can make any customer’s vision a reality on schedule, on budget and with no unexpected surprises along the way. Behind the scenes, Mayer Building Company boasts a supportive, unified work environment, which poised them for continued success even when COVID-19 disrupted traditional methods of meeting, collaborating and building. In the same way they tackle any project, Ryan D. Mayer and his team have set their sights on the future, moving onward and upward as they go.
In what ways are you thriving and pushing forward as a business during COVID-19?
In the early days of the pandemic, I made a list of goals for both myself and my company to focus on in the event we had downtime. As you can imagine, there was downtime. Among other things, I wanted to seek and obtain a new Mississippi license, OSHA 30 Hour professional certification, publish a couple of trade articles, maintain or try to maintain current staff levels, secure government assistance, increase my bonding capacity, tune up my online presence and newsletters, develop a new sales strategy to fit with the times, make charitable donations (even if minor), and spend most of my time focusing on people, not projects. I’d say the completion rate is at 85-90 percent. The net result is that these accomplishments not only made me a stronger leader, but also allowed for deeper connections to my stakeholders.
How have you maintained a sense of company culture?
Along with the personal and professional objectives I identified, I asked my staff to cultivate their own goal lists for our company. I’ve also expressed to each and every one of them my gratitude for “sticking it out” with me. Our company culture is based on fairness above most everything, and during trying times, fairness always serves well. Other than that, we have been in the business of expressing gratitude to customers, trying to find out what will be helpful to them and accommodating those requests. Lastly, while the conventional construction technician doesn’t necessarily convey a “picture of health,” times like these helped us pay more attention to regular workaday best practices of hand washing, eating healthier and effectively using PPE.
What has been your experience with the change to remote working?
Administratively, we had a smooth transition, but unfortunately, actual construction work cannot be done remotely. We excelled at maintaining CDC guidelines at our job sites, and our work schedules were adjusted for limited crews or trade-by-trade mobilizations. Our owners were apprised of (and appreciated) this adjustment. At one time, we had a person call in with a fever, so we shut down the job for a recommended period, disinfected surfaces with a qualified vendor, re-mobilized and still managed to complete the job to the customer’s satisfaction. I’m particularly proud of how we handled that.
Do you anticipate your business will change in any way when the community opens back up? If so, how?
I sure hope so. Change is good! I hope my staff is more tightly woven; I hope my subcontractors and vendors know I appreciate them; I hope my owners and design colleagues get a more robust sense of our customer advocacy. We’ve made some in-house promotions, and we set goals to participate in at least one additional staff volunteer day and one additional team-building day per year. More systematically, we’ve already streamlined our Bid Solicitation program and CRM, and we tuned up IT and online marketing. We hope to find a good, cheap cloud-based project management software by 2021.
