Jennifer Davis and Ahmed Abdelaal - Capabilities of Pre-Engineered Metal Buildings - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Jennifer Davis and Ahmed Abdelaal of Central States Manufacturing. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello and welcome to another episode of MetalCast from MetalCoffeeShop. I'm your host, Karen Edwards and today we are going to be talking about pre-engineered metal buildings with our friends from Central States and Building Works. And they're a key player in the metal building packages and systems space. And I'm really excited to welcome Jennifer Davis and Ahmed Abdelaal. Thanks for being here guys.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Thank you.

Jennifer Davis: Thanks for having us.

Karen Edwards: All right. To get started, I'd like, because we just met as well today. I would like you to introduce yourselves and tell me a little bit about what you do there. And Jennifer, could you go first?

Jennifer Davis: Sure. Hi, my name is Jennifer Davis. I'm with Central States Building Works and I serve as the president of this business unit, which is a part of Central States, the employee-owned company that has multiple businesses serving the construction and building trades industry. And in addition to some of those responsibilities, I also serve leading marketing and some other functions at the company, but specifically around Central States Building Works, I joined the company about a year ago and have really enjoyed getting to know the team and building out the core leadership and our reach to the marketplace building on the 20 years of experience we have in designing, building packages.

Karen Edwards: Excellent, thank you. Ahmed?

Ahmed Abdelaal: Hi, my name is Ahmed Abdelaal. I'm the Vice President of Engineering and Operation for Central States Building Works. I report actually to Jennifer and I'm supporting her in the operation and the engineering services. And as she stated, this business we have, I mean the company goes along for a long time ago, however, this division just started not very long ago, maybe a couple years and we are making a new avenue for the company as we're going. I joined the company for the last six months.

Karen Edwards: Oh wow. Welcome both of you to the Central States Team, Building Works Team.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Thank you.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the history of Building Works and the niche that it can fill in the industry. Why did Central State decide to roll this out?

Jennifer Davis: Yeah, absolutely. I can provide a little bit more context there. 20 years ago of our 35-year history, Central States started to get requests from customers who not only wanted to buy building materials, trim and panels and accessories for their buildings, but they needed those buildings to be designed. And so we set up a drafting group, set up some engineering capability with the goal of being able to design full building packages. I liken them to instead of buying Lego bricks, you're actually buying a kit, that people wanted to buy a kit from us. And so for 20 years we've been doing that with a real emphasis in the storage space. We have drawn tens of thousands of buildings over the years. Those buildings primarily have been single story storage focused building types, and as Ahmed said a few years ago, we started to expand that to larger clear span buildings with rigid frames.

And that has brought us into this pre-engineered metal building space. Again, driven by our customers and the requests that they've brought to us. But it's been a great opportunity to expand the business to serve new needs. And Ahmed is bringing in some great additional industry knowledge and know how that is further expanding our offerings. We started doing simple box buildings, 5,000 square feet or less and now we're expanding beyond that and starting to take on some more elaborate projects as we look to grow this business. And then just a little bit into the future, we are in the midst now of building a frame plant.

Karen Edwards: Oh.

Jennifer Davis: It's just a few miles from where Ahmed and I sit here in Northwest Arkansas, but that facility will allow us to produce all of the frames that we use and the structural still that we'll use for the buildings and the packages that we design for our customers, giving us even more flexibility, the possibility to innovate even more. And that'll come online mid-year next year.

Karen Edwards: That's really exciting.

Jennifer Davis: Yeah. It's really exciting.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. I mean that just really is a testament to the growth that you're experiencing. Why do you think that is?

Jennifer Davis: Ahmed, you have a great long history in this space. What are you seeing?

Ahmed Abdelaal: Well, let me tell you, over the last decades the growth in general in USA has been when you build a city, you go to the downtown, you build things vertically, but away from the city, your growth goes horizontally because you've got the bigger land. When you think of horizontal expansion, you got to think of what building I would do it on a horizontal level. You think immediately of the concept of our business, which is pre-engineered metal buildings. The pre-engineered metal buildings, in a simple word, they are the low-rise metal buildings, the low-rise metal buildings.

There is always a growth in this categories because if you want to expand industrial, you're going to build factories, you're going to build warehouses, you're going to build all that. If you're going to go with agriculture, you're still going to grow up some of that sectors. If you're going to grow up in commercial and community, you're still going to build some buildings, which is maybe two stories, one stories, three stories. That's still considered low story buildings. That's where the steel and the low and the pre-engineered metal building concept comes in to play in this development. And our country, there is lots and lots of growth and development in this aspect everywhere. That's why.

Karen Edwards: Okay.

Jennifer Davis: I'd add to that something that I think I get a lot of inspiration from personally is that so many of our customers are the uses that they're using buildings for. That horizontal growth that Ahmed was talking about is really housing growing businesses.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah.

Jennifer Davis: They don't need a new building unless they're a small business that has outgrown their garage. They need another factory location in a new city to serve new customers. They are expanding their operation and now have more cattle to put in a barn or more operations to run. It's exciting to be really at a front row seat to the growth of many small, medium businesses across the country as they expand and need more space. And so that's what we've been about. It's a pretty exciting thing to do and what we hear day in and day out is the story behind these buildings that people need designed and engineered and delivered to their job site. They're there to serve a business purpose and it's really exciting to see these growth of all these other industries that are now requiring a building to operate under.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, it means business is good, people are doing well. I like it.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah, yeah.

Karen Edwards: Okay. Let's talk about what you offer in the process. What does that process look like when a contractor, a person has a need, they want to expand horizontally and they reach out maybe to a contractor and the contractor then comes to you for help and what happens?

Jennifer Davis: Yeah. I'll take the front end and then Ahmed, I'll let you go from there because it actually represents the natural handoff of how our business works. We have a whole slew of people who are experienced and knowledgeable about these building types and the material that goes into them and the like that work with our customers, whether those be contractors as you said, we work with developers, we also contractors of many types from steel erectors all the way to general contractors. Or developers that might be building a whole campus or facility. We also work with other manufacturers to provide buildings for their needs as well. Again, we have a wide customer base that we serve, but we start with what are they trying to accomplish? And so we gather requirements about the size and the capabilities of the building that they're building, certainly the location that the building is located because that affects the design parameters a lot, whether it's the wind conditions or the snow load and the like.

We also get their preferences about the design of the building, the footprint, how it needs to sit on the property. It's not uncommon for us to get copies of architectural drawings and the like so that we can consult on that. For those simpler buildings it could just be, hey, I need something 30 by 40 with a door here and a window here. But we gather those requirements and we create an estimate and depending on the simplicity of the building, we can actually create permit drawings and estimates within a number of hours and days. But if it's more complex, then more people get involved.

And that's really from that point, either the point where we've contracted a simple building or we've started to engage on something more complex. That's where Ahmed and his team really start getting involved and driving that forward. Maybe you can talk about what happens from there.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah, sure. As Jennifer said, there is a front end, which is usually in the hands of our sales team in a direct contact with our clients, any clients, single client, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, you name it. Our sales team, they meet with them and they get all the requirements and then they pass it along to the estimation team to get a pricing. Then they pass the price to the client. Once we have an award on a project and now it moves from a tendering stage to a project stage, then it comes to the execution team from engineering side. The engineering side take this requirement and transform all these data into a platform of a design. We make a design of the building to match all the requirements that our client is looking for and what we have sold to the client, but we put it in details.

We make two products, a product for the factories to fabricate this product and another product from engineering that goes out to the client so he can put this building together. Those are the two outputs the execution team from engineering produces to the client and everybody else, an installation package and fabrication package, all that using the USA codes. We follow the USA design codes and standards and we have our softwares, automation software that help us out to design and detail and put everything properly so we have a quality product at the end of the day.

Karen Edwards: The thing that I'm curious is are you seeing people doing... Metal has so many possibilities, right?

Ahmed Abdelaal: Sure.

Karen Edwards: There's colors and designs and patterns, and are you seeing people really trying to think outside the box in what they're doing?

Ahmed Abdelaal: Jennifer, do you want to say or... Yeah.

Jennifer Davis: Yeah. Well, I would say our applications range from very traditional, metal agricultural buildings used for barn or hay storage and the like haven't changed in their design for many years and there's a traditional design that works. And then we have some that are quite innovative that are using materials in different ways and that are asking for things and we're able to push some innovation ideas, whether it's how we orient the materials on the building, the mix of materials, the use of metal with other materials like stone or brick or timber to enhance the look, especially if it's a retail location or perhaps the growing barndominium trend and the like. I think we retain a degree of flexibility in working with our clients to get them what they need. And because we operate 11 factories across the country that make metal building components, we're able to respond quite nimbly to requests for innovative materials or different, as you said, colors or things that would enhance the end aesthetic as well as the end use of that building.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah. I mean if I take you to the real world here, when you, Karen, walk around, you'll find different products. If I classify those products as there is industrial facilities fabrications where people wants to grow in industrial sectors, you'll find a lot of factories and a lot of warehouses, which is simply in the mindset of fabrication. It's not a decorative element. It's really into the fabrication segment. You'll find the structural and everything inside that building. They don't care much about the outside look, they care about the machinery and the operation of that building.

Karen Edwards: Very true.

Ahmed Abdelaal: All right. When you move gradually to community and the community buildings, if you're going to build a church, if you're going to build an auto dealership for a showroom, if you want to do that, if you want to build something that has decorative element, then the inside steel or the structure and the outside cladding and everything as a skin of the building, you'll find it in a view of a decorative element. Sometimes you do not even tell that the building is made of steel. Why? Because wow, look at this decoration, look at this. You think it's all made of wood, all made of glass, but the skeleton is made of steel. The nature of the business today force us that we change our mindset that everything can be done from steel, whether it's a steel for fabrication or a steel for a mall, strip mall or a big mall or whatever. Everything can be done through steel. But the point is the design and the detailing needs to be optimized to carry over the requirements where this client wants to have the outside look, the decorative element, those components that will be built on top of the steel that we produce.

Karen Edwards: Let's talk a little bit about the pre-engineered metal buildings, their advantages and why they're important for the industry.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Sure. What made the pre-engineered metal buildings very critical aspect, as I said, when you grow horizontally, when you do things, you want to think of the time. Time is important because the old school of business was concrete. Everything a hundred years ago, 50 years ago, everything was coming out from concrete. You only think of concrete building. But as we got the high rise, starting from the world, like the old high rise building in New York started with concrete, but moving along, it converted to steel.

Karen Edwards: Mm-hmm.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Like the Chrysler buildings or the other buildings out there, everything was made from steel after that. The conversion from concrete level to steel level has taken place with the high-rise. Same thing with every other buildings. They started to think of how fast can we put everything together? Then you think of steel, that's where the pre-engineered metal building came to think of. Steel is really fast track paced construction, that's one thing. Second is the availability of steel. As you know that USA is very good source of steel, so the availability is out there. And the software and the technique. That's some of the advantage. When you think of time, you think of cost. It saves cost, it saves time and easy for revision. You can modify and you can do things. That's one main aspect of really the pre-engineered metal building concept.

Jennifer Davis: Well, and I would add to that. I think our value proposition, Ahmed did a great job of describing why somebody would use a pre-engineered metal building. He hinted at it earlier, our approach to that is really to enable the installation to go very smoothly. These construction details that we provide, we're very proud of the detail that we're able to provide to the crews on site where the whole kit shows up piece marked and everything is organized so that these experienced crews can get from concept to building on the ground as quickly as possible. But I also think that value proposition and that speed actually even extends to our customers, the contractors, developers, manufacturers and the like because in this world of infinite choices that they have of not only building materials but how they go about running their business, we're able to do some things for them that otherwise they would've had to take the time and the expense to do themselves.

There isn't a company in the world that probably couldn't hire people, license software, develop the know-how to engineer their own projects. But a lot of companies don't do enough business to justify that, or that's not their core competency.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah.

Jennifer Davis: They run crews, they sell buildings to customers. That's what they excel at. This is an opportunity for them to actually really outsource all of that behind the scenes work from engineering. We know and maintain all the software licenses. We will provide engineered stamped drawings that are meet the most demanding standards of permit offices across the country. They're getting Central States quality. They're getting our assurances of warranty, plus they're getting these great installation instructions. We can set them up in business to be in the buildings business, even if maybe their core specialty has been something else. And we actually see that in some of our customers where they see buildings as either core to their business and something that we can help them be more effective and efficient at.

Or they see it as an add-on. Maybe they specialize in a different part of the construction ecosystem and they can add metal buildings as an offering. And we are doing that work in partnership with them behind the scenes to make them effective in this whole new part of business. And so we'll talk on the marketing side about our motto is "Build with Us" and literally we mean build using the materials we showed up, but we're also building businesses at multiple levels in this space. And so that's the thing that gets us involved every morning is to solve technical problems so that people can grow their businesses.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, yeah, I love it. And what an incredible opportunity that you are giving a small business owner the ability to expand into this area and you do that for free.

Jennifer Davis: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's all built into the cost of the building that we're providing them.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, that's fantastic. If people want to get started, what do they need to do?

Jennifer Davis: Well, certainly we welcome you to reach out to us. Our website is centralstatesco.com. You can look at metal building systems and get to know the offering a bit better. We have a really cool 3D building designer out there where people can play around with some different parameters of buildings. They can grow them, they can shrink them, they can spin them around, add doors and windows and easily request a quote from our team. And so that's been a fun tool for us to launch very recently. We also would love to see folks, Ahmed and I will both be at MetalCon later this month and we would love to see everyone at Atlanta. Our booth is 1054 and like I said, we'll both be there as well as Jason Monday our vice president of Sales will be there. And we love the opportunity to talk with you about your projects and how we, again, might help you grow your business.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, yeah. I'll be at MetalCon too. I'll have to come over and say hello and maybe we can get you guys on the sound stage for an interview on the MetalCoffeeShop YouTube channel. That would be great.

Jennifer Davis: Let's do it.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Yeah.

Jennifer Davis: Let's do it.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Great.

Karen Edwards: Well, Ahmed, Jennifer, thank you so much for being here today. This was a really interesting conversation and I hope that we've been able to help folks who maybe have been thinking about it but didn't really know what to do. I think it's fantastic. Thank you so much.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Thanks for having us.

Jennifer Davis: Of course.

Ahmed Abdelaal: Thank you.

Outro: And thank you all for listening. Please remember to follow us on social media. We don't want you to miss a thing that's happening and subscribe to our podcast so that we'll see you on a future episode of MetalCast. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.