Dianna Devore knew little about the commercial construction industry when she bought Design Fabrication in late 2010.
But following a steep learning curve that Devore says she’s still traveling, the Design Fabrication structural steel shop has doubled revenues under her watch.
“We’ve been able to introduce profits and hit bonus levels the last three years,” says Devore, a former 25-year employee in the Springfield ReManufacturing Corp. family of companies.
In Devore’s first year as owner, revenue came in $100,000 shy of her $2.3 million goal.
“Almost,” she says. “My strategy was just to be here the next year. I had a big loan payment. We pretty much broke even on income, and we had some cash flow.”
In buying out co-founders Bob Carpenter and Mark Lightfoot, she sold her 401(k) and stock options to put down 10 percent on a $1.4 million U.S. Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan financed by Guaranty Bank.
Devore arrived at the fab shop off North Glenstone Avenue accustomed to learning on the fly. After all, she’d spent years under Jack Stack’s leadership at SRC and practiced his Great Game of Business open-book management philosophy.
She says regular reviews of company financial statements influenced her to leave the general manager post at SRC Electrical and buy a business.
“It gave me the fire in the belly to want to do something more,” she says.
Building the project list One of the first things Devore did was add a fifth day to the workweek.
“The owners were working four-day weeks in preparation for retirement,” she says, noting the move also removed employees off of the state’s unemployment rolls.
The timing of her acquisition dovetailed economic improvements, and with more aggressive bidding Devore says project levels also are twice the volume in 2011. Design Fabrication’s 39 current projects include Hotel Vandivort downtown and Paradise Point in Branson, both examples of the uptick in private commercial jobs.
“The first year I was here, almost all the jobs were schools, churches and university work – public work, nontaxable jobs. But last year, we really saw a big swing in private money, taxable jobs,” she says.
At the end of 2014, Devore says half of the jobs were from private industry, which previously hadn’t been above 35 percent of the firm’s contracts.
Design Fabrication is a primary supplier for Larry Snyder & Co. projects throughout the Ozarks.
Donnie Volentine, a Snyder & Co. project manager, says others that submit structural steel bids are Doing Steel and Bountiful Enterprises. He says Design Fabrication won the material bids for Paradise Point and Hotel Vandivort.
“Vandivort was pretty intensive as far as design with the historical (elements) and fitting the existing building. There was a fair amount of steel and bar joist and decking supplied for that annex on the back,” Volentine says.
Design Fabrication buys steel from five major suppliers – Steel and Pipe Supply, Norfolk Iron & Metal, Brown-Strauss Steel, for instance – and subcontracts the steel erection work. Most jobs go to Erectors Plus Inc. or National Steel Construction Inc., Devore says. In that way, the company acts as a middleman between the general contractors and erector companies.
Before steel is placed, company draftsmen draw up the plans to precise specifications.
“You’re not making the same part over and over,” Devore says of the significance of the construction drawings turned over to the erectors. “In construction, you’ve got variables at every turn.”
One of the most unique jobs was a four-story spiral go-kart track in Branson. Devore says crews prepared 175 tons of steel for the Heavy Metal High Rise at The Track on Highway 76. Design Fabrication also prepared the steel for Parakeet Pete’s zip line over Lake Taneycomo at Branson Landing.
Devore says the firm just delivered steel for a Springfield Public Works clean water facility off Chestnut Expressway, and Volentine expects Design Fabrication to bid on upcoming condominiums in Branson and school projects in Springfield and Branson.
Game of profits While she’s come a long way, Devore admits she still has more to learn. One of those things is the language among contractors.
“The terms are different – all the acronyms,” she says.
There’s LLV for long leg vertical, TOS for top of steel or AFF for above finished floor, all important terms on construction documents.
“It’s shop talk. It’s trying to read the drawings, because I have to do some estimating,” she says, crediting her involvement as a Springfield Contractors Association board member as shortening her learning curve.
She also points to shop foreman Floyd Ross for putting her mind at ease on the operations side at the 8,000-square-foot plant.
One similarity she’s brought over from SRC is the technical aspect of the jobs. She’s not afraid to attempt to calculate the rise in the run of a stair, for instance.
“But I’m a long way from knowing what I need to on this one,” she adds.
The financials? She can handle.
While she’s not playing the Great Game with her team to the extent she did at SRC Electrical, profit sharing still applies. She says last year started out slow, but the last two quarters rescued profitability. The company issued a large lump sum equal to 13 percent of an employee’s salary, evidence of the general philosophy taught at SRC that cash is king.
“It was engrained: Do not run out of cash,” she says.[[In-content Ad]]
