Reader Profile: Brad Cole

July 18, 2016

More than 35 years ago, Brad Cole started Brad Cole Construction (BCC) to provide construction services in the Carrollton, GA, area. Today, it stands as one of the southeast’s largest heavy civil construction companies, providing turnkey services in site development, infrastructure improvement, and heavy civil construction, particularly complex landfill, power plant, coal ash, and industrial work. Services provided by more than 300 employees with 200 pieces of equipment include: clearing and grubbing, erosion and sediment control, grassing, paving and concrete flatwork, retaining walls, sanitary sewer construction, site excavation and mass grading, site structural concrete, stormwater management, dams and reservoirs, utility installation, dewatering, DOT construction, HDPE pipe installation, site mechanical, and electrical.

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BCC crews encounter everything from heavy and hard granite and limestone rock in north Georgia, to Piedmont soils in the Piedmont belt, to sand and Gumbo in southern Georgia. The company has earned three national safety awards. “Over the years, we’ve been able to do projects that were the first of their type in the world,” says Cole.

For example, the initial prototype for a cooling tower for the Southern Company, an electric utility holding company, was the first design in the world with a zero loss of water. The project involved significant excavation and stabilization in unsuitable soils and the installation of thousands of feet of 96- and 108-inch prestressed concrete cylinder-lined high-pressure pipe.

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What Led Him to This Line of Work
Cole’s work started as a way to feed his family and evolved to its present success. “People ask how I went from being a little local somebody, working on a building pad or catfish pond, to what I do today,” he says. “I say: ‘I answered the phone.’ That’s what we do. I had no conscious plan 20 years ago to be licensed in 12 states and have the learned workforce we have doing work for the sophisticated clients we have today.”

What He Does Day to Day
Cole focuses on two tasks: mentor other employees and analyze job sites’ features and difficulties to set the stage for the work involved. “So many young people know numbers and know computers, but they don’t have the field experience to look at a piece of land and know what needs to be done within the confines of that landscape,” he notes.

What He Likes Best
Being able to do projects “very few people can do” is what gives Cole his greatest satisfaction. “What we do is not for the fainthearted,” he says. “It is entirely different from the vertical concept. There’s a reason that what we do is called an art and not a science. I enjoy the challenges. Companies know if something difficult thing comes along, they can count on us getting it done. We’re not grading your typical strip shopping center—even though we do that work—we do a lot more difficult circumstances than that.”

His Biggest Challenge
Cole cites the shortage of qualified employees for the labor force as his biggest challenge and concedes he does not have the answer for it. He says it’s difficult to deal with various federal government laws that disincentive work, create difficulties in hiring immigrants, or attract students to college with loans they find difficult to pay back when they can’t find suitable work. He is concerned about the children of white collar workers who have the same job aspirations but lack skills such as one would develop working on a farm, such as sitting on a mowing tractor or nailing up a board fence. Many young people may avoid outside elements by pursuing careers in the fast food industry with potential to move up the managerial chain and then hit the ceiling, he adds.

“If you come into this business, commit to being an apprentice, learn a trade and learn to operate machinery, read a set of blueprints, turn wrenches, and weld confidently, in five years, you can take a half-dozen men and machines and install storm drains and pipes and make mid- to upper-five figures, maybe even six. If we don’t figure out a way to get those guys to come into this business, I don’t know where the future of it lies.”