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We're very excited to launch our official podcast: Building People!

Building People is a podcast highlighting the people behind C.E. Floyd’s construction projects. We're Building People in the sense that our work is centered around building, and we're also Building People in the sense that we build people to reach their full potential. Both a noun and a verb, Building People represents who C.E. Floyd is.

In this episode, I sit down with the CEO of our company, Chris Floyd, to discuss our newly achieved B Corp certification and PBC status. We talk about his lifelong learning mindset and the personal journey that inspired these certifications. 

Contact us to learn how we can help you with your next construction project.

Transcript

Richie: Hello and welcome to Building People, a podcast highlighting the individuals behind construction projects and the stories that we live. I'm your host, Richie McNamara. I politely ask that you make sure you're following us, C.E. Floyd, on Instagram and LinkedIn. While we get started with this episode of Building People. Today, I'm joined by the CEO of our company, Chris Floyd.

We discuss his background and lifelong learning journey, our company's growth into becoming a PBC and B Corp, and the humanity behind who C.E. Floyd is.

Richie: Hi, Chris. Welcome. Thank you for joining me today. You seem like a pretty busy guy, you’re the CEO of our company, so I appreciate you taking the time to join me today. But you've kind of dipped your toes into every department and team here, right?

Chris: I've had experiences working with most of the people here in a few different ways. I started my construction career as a laborer working on project sites during the summers when I was in college. I then worked as a Co-Op or assistant project engineer when I was in the summers and during college. I became a superintendent for a different contractor for a couple of years. Then I transitioned back to C.E. Floyd after business school. So business school was kind of like a transitional point between the other company and C.E. Floyd. And after I graduated from business school, I became a project engineer and worked my way up to project manager, and then I became part of the business development team, eventually took over responsibility for business development, finance, and marketing, and eventually took over as CEO.

Richie: So you've really been putting your hand in all the pots?

Chris: Everything except estimating. I never served as an estimator, but I've held some element of every other role in the business.

Richie: And that kind of reminds you of the story you told me about you picking your major in college, where you were in engineering a first, right?

Chris: Yeah. So I started off in a civil engineering program. I met with my advisor and I just wasn't all that excited about the lack of electives. I was taking a French class and that was kind of like the thing that drove me over the edge because my French class was really basic, and my engineering advisor told me that that was the highest level French class I should take because he was worried that it would distract me from my engineering studies. Basically was belittling languages and telling me my focus should be on the engineering course load. I realized then that that was not the experience that I wanted to have in college. And so I transferred schools because I was in a university system. So transferred from the engineering school to the Arts and Sciences School and ended up graduating with a major in French and political science with a minor in business administration. I almost had a minor in art history as well. So I ended up taking all the classes that I enjoyed and was interested in. I learned a lot and had a lot of great experiences.

Richie: Yeah. I feel like it's important to just like try everything and see what you like. So that's awesome.

Chris: That was my goal in college; that was the time to do it. And here I am being pigeonholed into a limited, narrow set of courses. I love to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. Part of my goal in college was to expand my horizons and try new things. And I wasn't even sure actually that I wanted to come back and work in construction, so I wanted to explore other avenues and other careers. But after I did that, I realized I really love building. And I didn't need to go to school for construction, to be in construction, to learn the business. And I still feel some of our best hires have been people who've come from outside of construction programs.

Richie: Yeah, I was talking about that with Catie (Director of Marketing), how something about our industry is that you don't need a college degree to enter it, which I feel like we need to see more, honestly.

Chris: Absolutely. And think of construction as a great gateway industry for people to come into and develop a career with really good economic potential, where hard work and learning on the job is part of what it takes to be successful. Regardless of what your education has been in the past if you work hard and you're good and you're willing to learn on the job and learn from your peers, then you can build a really successful and rewarding career.

Because of that, I think there's a lot of opportunity to bring people who haven't had economic success the opportunity to create a pathway towards economic stability and success for themselves in their generation and also for their kids in the next generation.

Richie: I love this, what I'm hearing, but what I really want to talk to you about today was about our newly cemented B Corp status. 

C.E. Floyd has recently achieved B Corp certification, meaning that we have committed to transparency and continuous improvement in the areas of governance, workers, and customers, as well as community and environmental impact. The certification comes after a comprehensive application process spearheaded by our Brand & Impact Specialist, Lindsey Hague.

Chris: Our B Corp certification is a true reflection of who we are and our strengths. The biggest thing that we had to do from a work perspective was take our informal policies and formalize them. I'm generally a very informal person, and so that for me was a little bit painful because I don't like having a lot of policies and procedures, but B Corp's requirement that things are cemented as a policy is to make sure that everything is authentic.

There's a significant audit process that requires digging into how you operate. Is it written down? There's a big piece of focus on governance, and there's a really good reason behind that as well. And that was where a lot of the work was. It's a recognition of how we treat our people, and how we care about people. And that's the area, along with the transparency and governance sections, where we really thrived.

Richie: You might have noticed that C.E. Floyd has added the letters PBC to our company name. Hear Chris explain what this means and why it's important.

Chris: PBC is a public benefit corporation. It's a type of business entity where you're not just creating value for shareholders, but you're creating value for your stakeholders, which includes the communities within which we work, and the people who work here. The public benefit that we create is based around our purpose, which is Building Visions and People. That includes continuing to provide for the future of the business and the sustainability of the business to profitability, but that's not the only focus.

So we are required as support and as fiduciary members through the governance of the business to consider stakeholders and the public good in addition to the value for shareholders. That's a really important distinction. What is the purpose of business, in our case, the purpose of our business is beyond value for shareholders.

Richie: Yeah, that's good to hear. And you've mentioned to me before that growing C.E. Floyd, in this direction, or getting these certifications to show that this is who we are, was rooted in a personal journey of yours. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?

Chris: Sure. So as I took over the business from my father in 2014, but I started actually buying ownership from him in 2008. When I reflected on my personal goals and my journey. What did I want to do with my professional career and my life? What kind of a contribution was I going to make to the business, but also to broader society, and what is my purpose?

I have spent a lot of time thinking through and working with people on what I want to do with my life. The simple question that a lot of people ask is: what do I want to do with my life? It's not that easy to answer. That question for, most people, is what opportunities are you presented with? And what things do you want to try? And then what are you capable of doing? Where are your strengths and weaknesses and how can you align those things into an opportunity and a direction?

Richie: Pretty simple.

Chris: Right? It sounds simple. And yet it's a struggle for so many people. So I've worked on that journey for myself. And then I realized that you know, I have a very unique opportunity as somebody who's now a business owner leading a business that has an impact on a lot of people. In construction, with the process of the work that we do, we leave behind an enduring symbol of our work, which is a building. Many of these buildings will outlive our lifetimes. We think about the longevity of the buildings and the structures and the impact on the environment. And I thought about it. I realized I didn't want to just create wealth for myself. I think the idea of building a business for personal gain was not appealing to me, and yet I was in a position where now I was putting all of my effort and all my financial resources into owning a business.

So what was I going to do with that and how is that going to create value for me? And the value for me was much more around purpose and much less around financial reward. And so I wanted to find a way to give back and create more value for a broader audience, a larger number of people.

As I thought through the personal stories of the people that I knew through the business and how many people at C.E. Floyd have been here for a long time, 30 years, 20 years, ten years are all typical life spans for careers at C.E. Floyd. I've seen people who've started in the trades, developing leadership responsibilities, becoming really good, strong leaders, and then building a really good financial nest egg for themselves and then being able to buy a retirement house or move on to the next phase of their life. They're heartwarming stories. And I think, you know, that's really what the purpose of our business is. The purpose of our business is the combination of creating those opportunities for people and also the products that we leave behind and what those buildings do for the communities within which we work.

And so we came up with the concept of Building Visions and People, and that really fits into what we do, which is creating the buildings. And the buildings are going to be long-standing reminders within the communities of the work that we've done, but also contributing value to the communities that we're in. Many of our clients, the majority, are nonprofits. Right now, around 69% are nonprofit, community-based organizations. So creating these structures helps to provide the platform for these organizations to deliver on their mission. 

What is this vision that our clients have? It's building visions for our client, for them to deliver value and deliver on their mission. And then the building of the people is the long-term career opportunities that we create here at C.E. Floyd, and the opportunities for our people to become more successful, build their careers, realize their potential, and build economic security and success for themselves and their families.

It's a great way for us to bring together a purpose that is meaningful beyond what we're providing for the shareholders. That has a lot of relevance to me in my journey because that's what that's where I really wanted to spend my effort and my focus. I can truly commit myself to the success of business in a way that is consistent with my purpose for my life, rather than as a means to an end to do something else.

Richie: I've heard from a lot of, like, nonprofit and charity entities that having a physical space is often a huge barrier for these organizations to be successful. So it's kind of cool that we're doing good on both sides of the building people and the building visions. That's great to hear.

Chris: Absolutely. We have so many examples of clients who need more space or a different space, to more efficiently deliver their value and deliver on their mission. The work that we're doing to help make that happen, the creative problem solving, creating more value for our clients... The impact is much greater than just creating a space.

We also love learning about the organization, and its mission. What are they trying to create, what is the purpose of this building? And then we can provide advice and feedback to extract the most value from that space to provide for that mission and the value that the organization is creating for the community.

Richie: So there are very few, maybe just one other construction company that is B Corp certified.

Chris: There's one other in Massachusetts and there are not very many. It's pretty rare. And, you know, the question is, why would we do this? I guess there are two main purposes and two main reasons that convince us. One, I saw the B Corp journey as a catalyst for change, an opportunity for us to do better.

We created our purpose of Building Visions and People, and we set it in stone by becoming a public benefit corporation. But I felt like there was more we could do. There are areas that I'd like to see us further develop and continue to improve. One was about becoming part of the B Corp community. We could continue to stay on top of different ways that we could support our people in their growth.

It's about continuous improvement, which is also consistent with the way that we run the business. The other piece of the puzzle is around the environment. That's an area where, if you think about construction, we're creating a building that's going to be there for a long time.

It's a natural resource-intensive process both to construct it and then also the embedded carbon within the building materials themselves. On top of that, you have, which is an even bigger part, the long-term operation of the building itself. So how can we do a better job at reducing the impact on the environment during the building process, which is a small piece of the puzzle, but then also think a little bit more about the embedded carbon in the buildings that we're creating.

And then how do we advise our clients on reducing the impact and the long-term life span of the building? One of those pieces of the puzzle is also around quality. So if you think about the ability to reposition a building to perform a different function in the future, now a large chunk of that building infrastructure can be repurposed.

You're reducing the impact on the environment significantly, and increasing the lifespan of the building itself.

Richie: It makes me think of The Food Bank of Western Mass, a project where we’re constructing a net zero building. It poses challenges in the building process, but, as you said, it's going to be standing for past our lifetimes.

Chris: That's one of the ways that we can bring a lot of value to clients around the building processes and bring real excitement and interest in learning and supporting somebody who has goals. Net zero, for example. Okay. Well, there aren't a lot of people who've done a lot of net zero buildings at this point. But we'd love to help you and we'll learn about it. And we're great at learning. We'll figure it out, bring the right resources to the table, and help you make it happen because it's meaningful and important to you. And so it is meaningful and important to us. There's great alignment there. In the future, there will be something else, some other avenue, some other thing that we're focusing on and that our clients are focusing on.

And it doesn't have to be one thing. We have a lot of flexibility and an interest in learning in certain. For example, at the food bank, they wanted to make a statement about the impact on the environment at the same time as expanding their ability to serve their community. And there's a really strong need for additional capacity for food.

So how can we marry those two things together? And we've been working with that team to help make the project a reality for a couple of years. It's really exciting to see it happen today.

Richie: Yeah, it's exciting. And like you said, B Corp is about continuous improvement, so it's always going to be something new that we're learning. So having that open mindset is great.

Chris: I love the concept of an open mindset. The term that's used a lot in education, today is a growth mindset, right? So it's if you look at how can we continue to improve ourselves, and then also think about the idea of a fixed pie versus growing the pie. 

If we say that we're going to become experts in one area, but we're not going to continue to change, we're just going to get deeper and deeper and deeper in that narrow slice, it's going to reduce our ability to serve our clients as their needs change. And so I'm much more focused on creating that growth mindset concept, which, as reflected in my educational journey, is that I wanted to continue to grow myself and expand my horizons and try new things. I didn't want to be limited or restricted. Being able to grow and change with our clients and the times is an important piece of the puzzle. And then as far as the idea of a fixed pie versus growing the pie concept, one of the things that I've been talking a lot about internally is diversity.

If we think about opportunity as a fixed thing versus an area of future potential growth, then it's "I have this versus you have that" mentality, instead of "how can we create a win for everybody?" One of the things that I've been pushing for a long time is increasing the diversity of our workforce.

And then how can we from there create more diversity within our suppliers?

Richie: I do want to have you back on this podcast another time to talk about diversity, because I think it is such an important topic to be open and honest about, and it's also a very big topic that I want to chat with you more about another time. Thank you very much for joining me.

Chris: Absolutely. Thank you.

Richie: To learn more about our company, go to CEFloyd.com and follow us on social media. Thank you for listening. I'm Richie McNamara and this has been Building People.