Josh Wight is president of BlueScope Construction, Inc., an experienced nationwide design-build general contractor specializing in the design and construction of large commercial and industrial facilities such as distribution centers, manufacturing plants and aircraft hangars. Josh has been involved in steel building projects for multi-national corporations across North America, Europe, China and Southeast Asia.
How did you become involved in the construction and design industry?
I came right out of university as an eager structural engineer-in-training and I was very fortunate to land my first job with Haris Engineering in Kansas City. Ali Haris was an incredible early design mentor; some of his work was referenced in my steel structures textbook! My first project was a five-story office building, which was great, but it wasn’t long before I had assisted design on unique structures like an octagonal megachurch, a helicopter hangar in the desert and a C-17 maintenance hangar. I noticed that all these intriguing projects were with a group called Butler Heavy Structures, which was a division of Butler Construction at the time. I eventually made my way over to this organization and have had the opportunity to explore many facets of the design, manufacturing and construction business over the years.
What is something that your company is doing that you consider innovative?
As part of BlueScope Buildings North America, we strive to be the most sought-after construction partner in our target markets. To continue on the leading edge in this way, it is imperative to stay differentiated and offer unique value to our customers. Our innovation team is developing a digital platform that allows our repeat customers direct access to a network of preferred suppliers of adjacent building products in order to simplify their planning and purchasing process. This helps to save time up front, frees up valuable resources and can be the advantage that helps them win work in a competitive environment.
What poses a challenge, risk or opportunity for your clients and what is your company doing to address it?
One of the greatest challenges in construction today is resources. At BlueScope Construction we offer in-house preconstruction, modeling, design, detailing, manufacturing, shipping, project management and installation services. By getting involved early and offering up our support from concept through finished construction, we take some of the burden off our customers’ teams, which allows them to pursue more opportunities and ultimately win more projects.
What is something you view as an emerging trend in the industry and what are your perspectives on it?
At BlueScope, we create and inspire smart solutions in steel to strengthen our communities for the future. That means a key focus for us globally is to enhance our sustainability footprint. We want to create new ways of manufacturing and building that proactively evolves the construction industry to gain all the positive aspects of new workspaces, while lessening the impacts to humans and the environment. We are continuously looking for partners across all divisions of construction that are improving building performance while reducing impact. This is our responsibility to the industry and our communities, and I believe our shareholders will hold us accountable to this change over time.
Any final thoughts on what to keep an eye on in the near future in the construction and design industry?
We recognize that COVID-19 has led to major shifts in the market. We are keeping a close eye on the need for warehouse and distribution space in response to the rapid increase in ecommerce. BlueScope Construction is uniquely equipped to design, fabricate and erect these facilities at high speed.
Most important, always, is the safety of every person. I appreciate that OSHA continues to move from monitoring lagging indicators to focusing on leading indicators. We need to be more vigilant than ever to provide effective training, engage our employees with the right questions on the good days, and ensure as much capacity and as many controls as possible between ourselves and danger.
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