2025 Dynamic Dozen No. 1: KCI Construction Co.

SBJ: What has been the key to your recent growth?
Gregg Scholtens: Strong leadership, strong vision. And that’s not from me, by the way, I’d say a corporate level. Just a real desire for growth. The organization has recognized that Springfield is an important part of where we want to have a flag planted, and that it’s an important segment in our future plans as a company for expansion. They’ve invested a lot of time, effort and money, to be quite honest with you, and making sure that we hire the right team and surround ourselves with a successful group of folks. And I think no doubt it boils down to our customer service too. Taking care of our clients and putting their needs first. Boy, when they see that, I think they recognize the value of it and keep coming back.

SBJ: This is the first year that KCI could have qualified for the Dynamic Dozen list, having joined the Springfield market in 2022. That was 100 years to the dot after your founding in St. Louis. What was the opportunity that the company saw in Springfield and what niche have you been able to fill within commercial construction?
Scholtens: It’s probably a combination of opportunity with Department of Transportation, we’ve got a longstanding history with MoDOT, we do a lot of MoDOT work in the St. Louis region. There was a definite recognized need for it in this market, but at the same time, there was a real opportunity to move into a health care market here that honestly appeared to be what I would say was underserved. KCI as an organization had an opportunity early on with CoxHealth to do some work at Cox College. That relationship just blossomed. I go back to being customer centric, just focused on that customer service side of it. Cox has seen that as a huge value. I’m not saying they didn’t get customer service out of other (general contractors), but they see something different with KCI. When you’re pleased with the end results and you like the process, you tend to come back to them. That strong relationship with a client could really drive repeat business. When you get those repeat clients, then it opens up opportunity to grow your team and pursue other clients then. That’s really been our focus in the last 12 months.

SBJ: In the coming years, where do you see that expansion happening?
Scholtens: There’s some opportunity for our industrial side of our business, and we have a lot of great manufacturing folks in this market. And then public sector work. We’ve got just a huge history doing public sector projects, government, K-12, higher ed, etc. We’re working for Greene County, we’re working for Missouri State [University] right now. That public sector work really aligns well for us as an organization. Springfield’s got opportunity for continued robust growth. As Springfield grows, Greene County’s going to grow, Missouri State’s going to grow, Springfield Public Schools is going to grow, the surrounding cities, Ozark and Nixa and Republic. There’s so much opportunity in those markets. We’ve spent the last year really in some strategic conversations and planning about what geographic growth looks like for us. I talk about that connection with that Department of Transportation world. Every state that I’m aware of has a Department of Transportation. And so, there’s opportunity. There’s some massive design-build opportunities that we’ve already gotten a piece of and we’re chasing more and more of that as well.

SBJ: What are the issues that you face when you experience rapid growth?
Scholtens: This is probably the case across every industry, but it’s people. That is no doubt the biggest challenge. Boy, we sure are struggling with it. And it’s across the board: it’s project managers, it’s estimators, it’s carpenters, it’s laborers, it’s operators. We need more and more and more people interested in our industry. Really and truthfully, it’s probably not the where or the when, when it does come to what I’ll call geographic growth, but it’s the who.

SBJ: Is there a tipping point for your growth?
Scholtens: We could probably go out and win all the work we wanted to. We could probably go gobble up as much market share as we desired, but we talked a lot about customer service. You’re going to fail at customer service if you’re not taking care of the client, and you’re clearly not going to take care of them if you don’t have the right people focused on those clients’ needs. It’s got to be strategic in growth.

SBJ: You have almost three decades in the construction industry under your belt. What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
Scholtens: It probably boils down to integrity. A lot of people will say, “Do the right thing even when no one’s watching.” But I once had an individual explain it to me: “Do the right thing even when it hurts.”

SBJ: Do you want to be the largest commercial general contractor in Springfield?
Scholtens: Being an (employee stock ownership plan), we just want to be profitable. We owe it to our employee owners to turn a profit to enhance their value of ownership in the company. It’s probably way less about top line growth and a lot more about bottom line growth. You can chase dollars all day long and you still have zero in the bank at the end of the day. There is no what I would consider to be a goal or desire to be No. 1, we just want to do the right projects for the right clients and where we believe that we’re brought to the table because of the value that we bring to that table and that we’re truly members of the team.