Executive Vice President Clint Dean said EMJ Corporation’s purpose is to serve. He spoke to the Chattanooga Civitan Club on Friday.
In 2015 alone, he said they put in 850 hours of community service.
“Our vision is to change the industry,” he said. “We feel like the construction industry is broken and that there’s a better way to do things. … We just think through collaboration and early involvement there’s a better way to go about construction.”
EMJ Corp. has been in business since 1968 and is a family of eight different companies, Mr. Dean said. The corporation focus on construction services, and for the first 30 years was known as a retail contractor, building sites such as Hamilton Place Mall.
The corporation is currently the 82nd largest contractor in North America. In 2016, they are “projected to cross the $1 billion dollar threshold,” Mr. Dean said, which would put them in or near 50th place. Last year, they completed 110 projects.
Mr. Dean said the ultimate goal, however, “is to work for no fee.”
“The way we would get paid is in the value that we would create for our clients,” he said. “We’re already doing that in a couple limited scenarios. … That’s where we wanna head.”
He also said that EMJ Corp. focuses on “building people who build buildings.” He explained their “Career-4-Life” program, which was developed to attract, retain, and motivate the best people in the industry.
He told Civitan members that while the corporation as a whole is working across the country and in Canada, most of the business from their Chattanooga office is focused on Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.
Currently, he said they are working on a new FedEx facility off of Interstate 75, a conservation institute for the Tennessee Aquarium which will be located on the back side of the Baylor campus, and a mixed-use apartment complex at 728 Market Street in downtown Chattanooga. He also said EMJ Corp. is involved in the Volkswagen project.
Mr. Dean explained that in the future, through the corporation’s continued efforts to “diversify,” they will focus primarily on three different sectors: industrial, student/multi-family housing, and healthcare.
Ultimately, though, he made it clear that the corporation and its employees “are continuing to stay focused on our community and being involved.”