August, 1946: The temperature soared into the nineties as a blistering Texas Panhandle sun burned down on the curved metal roof of the Quonset hut. Bob Moore and his crew tightened the last screw, rolled up the remaining tools and officially completed the first Bob Moore Construction project… on time and in budget.

With that simple Quonset hut began a legacy that has spanned six decades, extended from coast to coast, and includes a billion dollars worth of quality construction projects for some of the best known companies in the United States.

Over the years, Bob Moore Construction has become one of the most prolific and highly respected general contractors in north Texas. In recognition of this, the company was selected as the QUOIN / AGC General Contractor of the Year and has received numerous other honors. These honors include the Best Of Award from Texas Construction Magazine, the QUOIN / AGC Summit Award and the Outstanding Construction Award, a statewide competition through Texas Building Branch AGC.

Q&A WITH EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ED MCGUIRE

TCA – Tell us the story of how Bob Moore Construction became so invested in tilt-up.

McGuire – We got into tilt-up in the late-1970s. Bob Moore recognized the opportunities that tilt-up presented and made the decision to steer the company in that direction. Bob recognized the advantages tilt-up would provide for our particular niche, warehouses and distribution centers. Tilt-up allowed us to build larger buildings and deliver projects more quickly and economically. Bob also recognized that concrete’s fire-resistant qualities were a perfect fit for warehousing facilities.

Bob Moore Construction was on the front edge of the tilt-up construction wave. For example, in 1980 we were one of the first contractors in the country to match load-bearing tilt-wall panels with Butler MR-24 standing seam roofs. At the time, we were one of Butler Building’s top volume builders.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that tilt-up construction was the right choice for our company. We quickly made the decision to focus on building larger commercial buildings using tilt-up construction, with single-ply or built-up roofs. This allowed us to build larger and more complex structures and reach into new markets, such as flex/tech buildings, retail, banks and office buildings.

Thanks to tilt-up construction we broke the 500,000-SF project barrier in the 1990s and the 1,000,000-SF barrier in the 2000s. We have built everything from food processing facilities, fully automated and technically advanced warehouses, large retail operations, and a 1.2-million-SF business center that was the largest, and the first, LEED Gold Certified core and shell industrial projects in the state of Texas. None of these would have been possible if Bob Moore hadn’t had the vision to recognize tilt-up construction’s potential 40 years ago.

TCA – What challenges have you faced along the way?

McGuire – From an engineering standpoint, our region has highly expansive soils so our buildings must be designed properly with that in mind.

We work for real estate developers as well as business owners and end users, and in some cases our customers aren’t familiar with tilt-up construction. It’s an education process we go through with them so they understand the value and benefits. Once they see how tilt-up construction can compress their schedule, deliver cost efficiencies and provide outstanding quality, they’re very excited about having their projects done this way. This is one of the reasons why we support the TCA; thanks to the TCA’s efforts to promote tilt-up we’re finding more and more developers who are already aware of the advantages for this technology and want it for their projects.

On occasion we’ve built in areas with local building codes for masonry facades. We’ve employed creative surface finishing solutions implemented as the panels were poured that allowed us to leverage the cost and schedule benefits of tilt-up while delivering a building that meets the community’s aesthetic and code requirements.

TCA -What were the opportunities you saw?

McGuire – I’ve touched on this in previous comments. In the 1970s Bob Moore saw how tilt-up construction would allow us to build bigger, better, faster and more complex projects within our existing market niche, and to expand into new types of buildings to improve our profitability and broaden our footprint in the area’s real estate market. Our growth, stability and future potential all rely heavily on tilt-up construction.

Something else I hadn’t mentioned. Living in Texas, we are subject to extreme and sudden changes in the weather which can influence our schedules. Tilt-up construction is perfectly suited to construction in these weather extremes because it provides a compressed schedule and allows the trades to overlap.

For example, on one project we had a crucial completion date – the company literally was being forced out of its old location by the completion date or it would face severe penalties. During that project we lost 20% of our construction days due to heavy rains. Because we were using tilt-up construction and we had chosen qualified, reputable subcontractors who understood tilt-up, we were able to compress the schedule and complete the building by the scheduled completion date even with all the lost days.

TCA – When the sustaining membership category was implemented Bob Moore was one of the first to upgrade membership. Can you discuss your reasons for continued involvement in the association and the ways in which the TCA is integrated into your everyday business?

Generally speaking, Bob Moore Construction participates in organizations like TCA, AGC and ACI that represent and promote our corporate values in the industry. As a company we want to build buildings with superior quality and durability, provide value and fair pricing to our customers, meet our schedules and most importantly, do so while adhering to legal requirements and best practices that make our work as safe as possible.

Our support of reputable trade organizations like the TCA is the best way we have to project those values beyond our own projects and out into the entire construction community. By supporting organizations like the TCA we make our entire industry safer, more productive, more effective and more profitable – which serves everyone’s interests.

Specifically regarding the TCA, we recognized early on that the TCA provides a variety of benefits to the construction community that justified our support:

• No other organization does more to educate construction companies, subcontractors AND real estate developers on the many benefits that tilt-up construction provides. As stated earlier, awareness among developers has improved through TCA’s efforts so over the years we have found more and more people who understand and want tilt-up for their projects.
• As more people become aware of the TCA, our membership is a simple way for us to convey our commitment to the values I described previously. More and more developers now recognize that a member of TCA has accepted standards of quality and safety that ensure the best possible project. Quite simply, being a member of TCA says who we are and separates us from the companies that are not members of TCA.
• TCA drives improvements in the standards and processes for tilt-up construction. This means our subcontractor crews are safer and more capable than ever before – and they will continue to get better and better in the future. TCA provides a mechanism for us to share our learnings and to learn from top contractors around the country about ways to improve safety and be more successful.

For all these reasons we are very proud to be members of the TCA. When the new sustaining membership category was announced, we knew immediately that we would upgrade our membership to support the TCA and all it stands for.

How is the TCA integrated into our everyday business? As I said, the values of the organization mirror our own values, so in that sense the TCA is fundamental to our way of doing business. We promote our membership in the TCA on our website and marketing materials because of this. We even created a separate website at tiltup.com to  further support TCA’s educational efforts. And we take part in the organization’s committees, board and other activities because we want to help the TCA and tilt-up construction to continually improve.