Brandon Mason has always had a passion for construction and an entrepreneurial spirit.
In 2019, he formed BCMason Group, a general contractor based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company mainly performs infrastructure and site preparation work, often in community impact projects, which mitigate negative impacts such as noise, traffic congestion or general disturbances, with a portfolio of contracts reaching 525 million dollars and 10 full-time workers.
After forming the company, Nashville experienced population growth during the pandemic and has continued to gain attention as a popular tourist destination.
Here, Mason talks to Construction Dive about the state of construction in Nashville, the value of community impact projects, and the rapid growth of his company.
The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Construction Immersion: What is the construction industry like in Nashville today?
Brandon Mason: I wasn’t born or raised here. I went to college about an hour north at Western Kentucky University, so I spent some time here during college, but I’ve been here since 2016. It’s definitely grown quite a bit as a city.
There are many prominent and Fortune 500 companies headquartered around here or in the suburbs that many people don’t know about: HCA Healthcare, Tractor Supply. Amazon and Facebook have an office and a data center here, respectively.
Brandon Mason
Permission granted by BCMason Group
And then the surroundings, there is a lot of growth for manufacturing, warehouse, industrial; this type of facilities and projects. Prologis has recently started in a warehouse complex in Nashville. It was also recently announced that Construction is complete at Creekside Logisticsa new Class A warehouse development located just outside of Nashville in the town of Smyrna.
We also had an influx of people from the West Coast during and after COVID-19. This really led to a lot of development, jobs and opportunities. And with growth, with high-rises, housing and the expansion of residential neighborhoods, the by-product is more people, more cars. The infrastructure around the transit has been strained. But I think the city is ready to face the challenge.
we have one the new Titans stadium is cominga New Tennessee Performing Arts Center arriving The hotel sector has taken off. This is the place for bachelor and bachelorette parties. This is a place people want to be, want to come visit and spend time, or live and raise their families. We look forward to supporting this growth as it continues. And I don’t want to forget the gastronomic scene, you know? This is one of the best gastronomic scenes in the country, in my opinion.
You started doing community impact projects. Why that? How much of your portfolio are these projects?
I’d say it’s more than 75%. When I started the company, you’re always looking for a shiny, beautiful project that everyone wants to be a part of. We just found our niche and specific projects that not many people talk about, but still make an impact. And one of the first projects was a $10,000 curbside bus stop improvement project at a church.
Financially, it seems small, it’s a small project, but the impact was massive in the sense that there was an elderly woman who had been going to that church for 40 years and used that bus stop every sunday to go to and from church.
We are all in business to make money. I’m not going to sit here and act like this isn’t important. But it’s stories like these that matter when we’re going to try to get work done in this city. We want to not only deliver a quality product, but deliver an impact in a way that matters to people.
Your company is still very young, but you’ve seen a lot of growth. What do you attribute that to?
I have been described as a more conservative business person. In terms of our growth, we scaled in a positive direction, we doubled our revenue year over year. However, when you really look under the hood of what we’re doing, we’re actually getting better at it. So the sidewalk project we did was $10,000 at first, now we’re taking on $300,000 packages or $500,000 packages. It is similar work to what we have done in the past. We are only able to take on more projects at scale, which increases revenue.
I would attribute our growth to our team being able to learn and grow with the company. As we take on larger projects, we can maintain and develop efficient processes and principles from the lessons we learned from smaller jobs. You know, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I think we’ve responded and learned well from those mistakes, and we’ve been very transparent with our customers.
How has mentoring helped you grow your business?
A guy named Don Hardin, the head of the Don Hardin Group here in Nashville—I worked with him on an airport project when I was with another company—called me and asked if I would be interested in working on the Museum National of African American Music. He said he was going to make some presentations. And that really transformed my vision and my approach to construction as an African American.
The project had an African-American entity as the owner, an African-American entity as the owner’s representative, and then an African-American general contractor, the Don Hardin Group. And I was part of the general contracting team. And this project was the definition of a community impact project: it had taken the museum 20 years to get funding to get to where they could start building it.
To have such a group of individuals, to be able to learn and work with them was invaluable. They pushed me, challenged me, offered other opportunities after the fact, and there’s still a group I can call right now if I need any advice or help.
They were very instrumental and adamant in passing on their knowledge and experience so that I could succeed, or that other young construction professionals, not just African-Americans, could succeed.
