Building Canada’s Top-Growing Construction Company
On September 23rd, 2022, I opened up my email and received a note from the Globe & Mail, informing me that Orion Construction made the list of Canada’s Top Growing Companies. Not only did we make the list, but we placed #1.
I jumped out of my chair and re-read the email in disbelief, thinking that there had to be a couple zeros behind that 1. I was expecting we’d place in the hundreds, but seeing our name, Orion Construction at the top of the list was very unexpected, but assuring confirmation of our incredible growth.
How It Started
Starting a construction company was always in the cards for me. I grew up surrounded by a family of contractors. My dad is a contractor, my brothers are in construction, and my uncle is a contractor developer, so it was natural for me to enter the industry. I started early in construction around 16 years old as an electrical apprentice. I studied Economics at UBC and worked in construction in the summer.
Orion Construction was founded in 2018, right before my 30th birthday. The company started with only four people. Myself, Myles Halstead our Director of Construction, Braden Smith our Director of Development and Adam Drake our Estimator.
Our first office was a 300 square foot mezzanine in an industrial building at Campbell Heights in Surrey. We lasted less than a year in that tiny space and purchased a strata unit in Campbell Heights with about 10 staff members. In 2022, we moved into our current office, a 6,500-square-foot space on 200th street in Langley, with our team of 25 in the office.
3 Reasons We Get Project Opportunities
Our business has experienced a series of progressions over the last couple of years, and I believe it lends itself to these three reasons.
1. Timing
One of the most fortuitous things for us was the timing of when we entered the market. Industrial has been a significant asset class for decades in Metro Vancouver. When we launched in 2018, developers were doing a lot of different work, and the vacancy was incredibly low. As the residential boom was happening, companies were spreading themselves too thin and not specialized. On the construction side, we could see a couple of big construction companies and a lot of smaller family shops. Our timing to come in and present ourselves as a strong, specialized brand helped secure projects early on, giving us a lot of momentum.
2. Service Offering
We saw a lot of our competitors offering their services after clients hired a separate architect and engineer and received the appropriate permits. Understanding that clients are working with multiple companies for one project, we developed a design-build strategy and honed in on that to master it early on. Currently, we’re the only general contractor with a ten person pre-construction services team, an in-house architectural technologist, an in-house BIM specialist, an in-house interior designer, and in-house tenant improvement. Being an expert at the design-build offering and mastering it has given us a competitive edge. A challenge we experienced, being young and new, was that we didn’t have a lot of experience under our belt. However, we were able to offer more in-house services at a very high caliber and sophisticated level, which drastically set us apart from the competition and won us a lot of business early on.
3. Team
Over the course of 4 years, we have grown to a team of 43 people, including site supervisors. We’ve been very intentional with our growth. We saw that we had quite a big pipeline early on, so we wanted to ensure we were hiring ahead of our pipeline. Although the pandemic impacted our business in various ways, on the recruitment side, it was actually beneficial for us because we managed to pick up some great, talented people who were willing to take a risk on a company that was quite young. Through referrals and word of mouth, we were able to grow our team significantly with almost a 100% retention rate. Only recently have we started working with a recruitment partner to help us support the growth of our company. We provide a lot of extra perks and benefits to ensure that our team is taken care of, including healthy food and snacks in the kitchen, a private gym for our employees and a personal trainer. We also created the Orion Building Futures program to keep us involved with the communities we build in and give back. We also provide a top-up for counseling services when our employees hit the ceiling of those services within our extended medical benefits. I believe creating a positive and healthy workplace and having a great team attracts top talent.
Branding and Reputation
Attracting and working with top talent garners a positive reputation within the construction industry. Doing a great job on the first few projects is crucial but not an easy job. The developments that we build speak for the company and are a representation of our business and team, impressing the clients and the industry. As we finish more projects, experience challenges, and gain more experience, we become a better team and business, with our reputation going up. We do our absolute best to keep the reputation that we have gained over the years and will continue to do so. As we’re growing our portfolio and client base, we also carefully think about who we work with and are focused on the clients that we want to work with. Our strategic approach to marketing and sales lends itself to our branding. Last year, we brought on Cameron Archer, who is our Director of Sales and Marketing, to help grow our marketing program and support sales in various ways.
We look at branding and reputation as a whole. Increasing our brand awareness and being strategic with where we spend our time is important. We spend time being active with the media, positioning our team as experts and thought leaders in the industry while also being active on social media. We proactively apply for awards that can best represent our company and are active members of various associations that align with our brand.
On the construction side of things, we have Myles Halstead, who, along with numerous things, works with his teams to ensure our sites are tidy, clean and, most importantly, safe. All signage is clear and branding is clean. We’re organized. All these details set the tone for our sites and field workers. We find that our trades want to work with us because our sites are organized, well-kept and safe, and we care about the people working on our sites.
What’s Next?
Looking forward, we are focused on consistency. Our focus is providing a consistent experience and project execution to deliver superior products. We’re seeing the rise in popularity of multi-storey industrial units, and this is because land prices are so high in our market that it makes sense to be building multi-storey units again. Stacked Industrial, which are warehouses on top of warehouses, are popular in the Fraser Valley. We will also be continuing to put sustainability at the forefront and push towards net-zero projects.
Land in Metro Vancouver is scarce and expensive. It is becoming a pressure cooker for creativity and innovation, but we’re also excited to be growing into new markets. We currently have projects in Kelowna, Kamloops, Langford and Colwood on Vancouver Island, and we will continue to expand into new markets.
We’re most excited to be growing our market share in our current market. Our project sizes have grown to be multiple phases of over 1 million square feet. The core of our market is within Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge, Richmond and Burnaby.
We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. Growing from a 4 person team to a team of 32 in the office, 11 on site, with 2 million square feet of projects under our belt.
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