A Conversation With ... William Textor

The median age of construction workers nationally is 42.4. What are some of the challenges of recruiting the next generation?
In some of the more difficult, hard-work trades, you do need a younger workforce because those guys when they’re in their 40s and 50s, they need to be either supervising or managing crews. They need to be doing something that’s not back-breaking hard labor. That’s been a challenge. A large part of that has been the progressive push toward college. I’ve got four daughters that got degrees, so I’m not anti-college. But for some people, there is an innate desire to build something. Channeled right, that becomes a good career.

What are you doing to make this a more attractive and accessible career choice?
On my goal list for probably the past 10 years I’ve had an apprenticeship program. We run 60 to 80 employees, but whenever you start looking at adding 10 apprentices – you need enough to have a class to make it worthwhile for an instructor – it’s just daunting. A couple years ago, I started meeting with some of the local concrete contractors and a couple of us partnered together. For the first year, it was just us and Donco 3 Construction, and we both put four students each into the program. Last year, we were shooting for 10. We started with eight; we’re finishing the year with seven. It’s better than what I expected. The prospect of starting the second year where we’ve got two classes going at a time is coming up this fall.

The Springfield Contractors Association, which you’re on the board of, is trying to reach out to younger people, too, with Build U and partnering on Build My Future, which recently attracted 3,000 high school students to its event. What are the goals of those initiatives and others?
With Build My Future, for us that’s more of get your name out there. We’re promoting our apprenticeship program. I do a whole lot of in-school deals, career days. Most of the time it feels like whenever you’re doing that, you’re talking to kids that just really want to get out of class. But this past year we partnered with building trades classes to do the foundation for a house that they’re working on. We sent a supervisor over there and had him work with their students. I find that those kids have already decided that they want to build something; that’s the career that they want. SCA, the Workforce Development Committee, has also worked to acquire funding for apprenticeship programs. We just acquired funding for a pretty large plumbing apprenticeship program. We’re also building a partnership directory that includes a bunch of apprenticeship programs for people that are not even SCA members. The objective, more than anything else, is not a job. It’s to create a career path for young individuals where you could work through retirement and have a successful life.

How long have you been in the concrete industry?
My dad started Textor Construction in 1984, I believe. I came on with him in 1986 while I was attending (Southwest Missouri State University) to get an accounting degree, so I could get out of construction. It didn’t work. Honestly, working as an accountant and sitting behind a desk in a cubicle in a smoke-filled room, none of that appealed to me. But it seemed easy. I would drive past projects that I had worked on while I was working my way through school doing construction work and (I would think), I built that. I changed my mind and I decided that that’s what I needed to do. Now, that accounting degree comes in pretty handy for me. I’m running two companies.

It seems like people in your industry need to work together on talent initiatives.
My attitude has always been probably pretty ruthlessly capitalistic. Put them out of business. But we had a truck that had trowel machines on and it rolled over on (Interstate) 44 at like 2 a.m. on the way to a job site. We had a reputation for knowing the guidelines for concrete. A lot of my competitors would call and have questions and I would help them out. I would beat myself up after. That day, though, when we had that wreck, I had six different concrete contractors that are competitors of mine call me up and say, “Hey, I’ve got a trowel machine you can use for a couple weeks.” That honestly saved my business and changed my mind about community mindedness.

What are some of your goals for the SCA?
I’m pushing for more subcontractor involvement. Probably the majority of them are 12 men and under and the owner is swinging a hammer. It’s hard for them to be involved in an organization that meets during the daytime. I’ll exchange emails with them about what’s going on and try to keep them updated to help protect our interests. The SCA works hard reviewing codes, making sure we don’t have codes that are prohibitive to building in the city of Springfield. Some of the more recent building codes are costly. If Springfield adopts some of these codes and surrounding areas don’t, it’s going to increase the growth around the area but not in Springfield. Our objective is to keep Springfield toward pro-growth.