When the pandemic hit, Saunders Construction, like many businesses, focused on keeping its doors open while ensuring the safety of its employees. Coincidentally, the Denver-based contractor was also “moving forward to start a big stretch of new projects,” says Justin Cooper, the company’s president.
While the contractor put many of those projects on hold to focus on playing defense, “we also had to play some offense,” Cooper says.
One strategy involved expanding the company’s geographic footprint into the mountains, southern Colorado and Wyoming, and Saunders added an office in Colorado Springs during the pandemic. “The goal was to become a border-to-border contractor,” says Cooper.
In another specific move, Saunders grew its concrete business, launching a subsidiary for self-build and third-party concrete services, which was incorporated as its own entity in 2023.
Saunders’ reported revenue has more than doubled since the pandemic, from $339 million in 2021 to $711 million in 2023, putting the company in second place on the list of prime contractors of ENR for Colorado, Wyoming and the Dakotas for the second year in a row.
Holistic growth
“At our core, we are a relationship company,” says Cooper. Acknowledging that this sounds cliche, he says Saunders has applied this principle to “get back to the basics of doing business.”
To accommodate the growth, Saunders created an onboarding manager role to provide on-site training, development and resources for newly hired staff. A text message program was launched to better communicate with all employees, including field team members, and all communications are translated into Spanish.
Skills development classes, computer courses and leadership training are incorporated into the internal development programs Saunders offers its employees, says Ame Muniz, director of learning and development.
The contractor also launched a mental health initiative to ensure the mental safety of its employees receives the same level of attention as their physical safety. Saunders was one of 10 organizations selected to pilot the HOPE certification program in Colorado. Created by United Suicide Survivors International and supported by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the program helps workplaces meet the total wellness needs of workers. Employee assistance programs range from mindfulness training activities to anxiety and sleep support, and all of the company’s 500-plus employees are eligible for eight free counseling sessions at per year, for a single subject.
“Our employees feel more comfortable talking about mental health and checking in with their peers and co-workers to make sure they’re okay,” says Muniz.
“We are evangelists for bringing mental health first aid to construction,” adds Cooper. “In the field of physical security, [we have evolved from] a culture of writing safety checklists in workplaces to focus on collaborative thinking and engagement… The goal is that we design out the hazards that can hurt someone,” he says.
By the end of 2023, Saunders’ EMR had fallen to 0.55, the lowest in the contractor’s history.
Saunders is building the new heart and vascular tower at AdventHealth Littleton Hospital.
Photo courtesy of Saunders
Building what matters
Coming out of the pandemic, many of the big projects that were put on hold have now come to life. Cooper says the decisions about which projects to pursue are intentional. Building What Matters may be the contractor’s kumbaya slogan, but as Saunders celebrates its 50th anniversary, company representatives cite 100 completed or ongoing projects that serve vital community purposes, including public transportation, healthcare healthcare, behavioral health, education, science and technology, recreation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings.
Saunders is also adapting to industry challenges, and the contractor’s technology investments since 2020 are paying off, says Sean Jackson, senior superintendent of the new 16-story luxury high-rise project One River North in Denver.
“We are evangelists for bringing mental health first aid to construction.”
—Justin Cooper, President, Saunders Construction
“While material shortages have eased from where they were six months ago to a year ago, this project was affected by a substantial shortage of materials from the glass contractor, a challenge for a building of glass,” he says. To address both material and labor challenges, Saunders is “refocusing our planning initiatives in the pre-construction phase, engaging with our business partners early on,” says Jackson. “Gone are the days when in the end you could swarm the project to get it done; this is not possible today. You have to be very aware of your production rates from your business partners.” As difficult as the One River North project was, “we stayed true to ourselves,” he says. “In this market it would be very easy to run away from your beliefs when you were in a tough spot…our team has never strayed from who we are.”
Other projects include the transformation of the Steamboat Ski Base area and the February groundbreaking in the Legacy Building on the National Western Center campus in Denver. Saunders is also building the new heart and vascular tower at Littleton Adventist Hospital for longtime client AdventHealth and is finishing a housing project with Tetrad in Fort Collins to provide housing for State University faculty and staff from Colorado.
“The project is a testament to the collaborative nature of working with Saunders,” says Jordan Berger, president and CEO of Tetrad. “We went through a huge cost escalation and [still] in the end it ended up way under budget… We worked together to solve problems, and there’s a lot of trust.”
