Brandon Mason has always had a passion for construction and an entrepreneurial spirit.
In 2019, he formed BCMason Group, a Nashville, Tennessee-based general contractor. The company mostly performs infrastructure and site prep work, often on community impact projects — which mitigate negative impacts such as noise, traffic congestion or general disturbances — with a portfolio of contracts reaching up to $525 million and 10 full-time workers.
After he formed the company, Nashville experienced population growth during the pandemic, and has continued to gain attention as a popular tourist destination.
Here, Mason talks with Construction Dive about the state of Nashville construction, the value of community impact projects and rapidly growing his firm.
The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CONSTRUCTION DIVE: What is the construction industry in Nashville like today?
Brandon Mason: I wasn’t born and raised here. I went to college about an hour north at Western Kentucky University, so I spent a little bit of time here during college, but I’ve been here since 2016. It has definitely had sizable growth as a city.
There’s a lot of prominent and Fortune 500 companies that are headquartered around here or in the suburbs that a lot of people don’t know about: HCA Healthcare, Tractor Supply. Amazon and Facebook have an office and a data center here, respectively.
Brandon Mason
Permission granted by BCMason Group
And then the surrounding areas, there’s a lot of growth for manufacturing, warehouse, industrial; those types of facilities and projects. Prologis recently broke ground on a warehouse complex in Nashville. It was also recently announced that construction is complete on Creekside Logistics, a new Class A warehouse development located just outside of Nashville in the town of Smyrna.
We also had an influx of people from the West Coast during and after COVID-19. That really triggered a lot of development, jobs, opportunities. And with the growth, with the high rises, the housing and expansion of residential neighborhoods, the byproduct is more people, more cars. The infrastructure around traffic has been strained. But, I think the city’s up for the challenge.
We got a new Titans stadium coming, a new Tennessee performing arts center coming. The hotel industry has taken off. This is the place for bachelor and bachelorette parties. This is a place that people want to be, they want to come visit, and spend time, or live and raise their families. We’re hopeful to be able to support that growth as it continues. And I don’t want to forget the food scene, you know? This is one of the better food scenes in the country, in my opinion.
You started by pursuing community impact projects. Why is that? How much of your portfolio are those projects?
I’d say it’s more than 75%. When I started the firm, you’re always looking for a beautiful shiny kind of project that everybody wants to be a part of. We just found our niche and the specific projects that not a lot of people talk about, but that still have an impact. And one of the first projects was a $10,000 sidewalk bus stop improvement project at a church.
From a financial standpoint, that seems like a small — that is a small project — but the impact was massive in the sense that there was an elderly lady that had been going to that church for 40 years, and she used that bus stop every Sunday to get back and forth to church.
We’re all in business to make money. I’m not going sit here and act like that’s not important. But it’s stories like those that matter when we go to try to do work in this city. We want to not only provide a quality product, but provide an impact in a way that matters to individuals.
Your company is still pretty young, but you’ve seen a lot of growth. What do you attribute that to?
I’ve been described as a more conservative business person. With regards to our growth, we scaled in a positive direction, we doubled our revenue year-over-year. When you really look under the hood of what we’re doing, though, we’re really just getting better at the same thing. So, the sidewalk project that we did was $10,000 at first, we’re now taking on $300,000 packages or $500,000 packages. It’s similar work that we’ve done in the past. We’re just capable of taking on more, to-scale projects, which adds to the revenue.
I would attribute our growth to our team being able to learn and grow with the company. As we take on larger projects, we’re able to keep and develop efficient processes and principles from the lessons that we learned from the smaller jobs. You know, we made a lot of mistakes, but I think we’ve responded and learned well from those mistakes, and been very transparent with our clients.
How has mentorship helped you grow your company?
A guy by the name of Don Hardin, the head of Don Hardin Group here in Nashville — I worked with him on an airport project when I was working with another firm – he called me and asked me if I would be interested in working on the National Museum of African American Music. He said he was going to make some introductions. And that really transformed my outlook and my approach to construction as an African American.
The project had an African American entity as an owner, an African American entity as the owner’s rep and then an African American general contractor, Don Hardin Group. And I was a part of the general contractor team. And that project was the definition of a community impact project: It had taken the museum 20 years to get funding to get it to where they could start building it.
To have a group of individuals like that, to be able to learn and work with was just invaluable. They pushed me, they challenged me, they provided other opportunities after the fact, and there’s still a group that I could call on right now if I need any advice or need help.
They were very instrumental and adamant about pushing to pass on their knowledge and their experience so that I was successful, or that other young professionals in construction, not just African Americans, could be successful.