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It’s back-to-school season across the country, and Nick Proffitt, Cincinnati-based Messer Construction’s senior education manager, has new construction on his mind.
Nick Proffitt
Permission granted by Messer Construction
With major university projects underway in Tennessee and the Carolinas, Proffitt knows how to be a successful player in the higher education market while working to differentiate Messer from the competition.
Here, Proffitt talks to Construction Dive about how the company sees demand for higher education, his theory on why the industry is hot right now, and how to succeed as a builder in the space.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CONSTRUCTION DIVE: How does Messer approach higher education projects?
NICK PROFITT: One important thing with a higher education is the variety of projects you will see. It could be a residence hall, a dining hall, a classroom building, a research laboratory, a medical center at a university, athletics, stadiums, training facilities. It really runs the gamut of all the different types of projects we are best suited for.
It takes a lot of planning to make sure that what we’re doing on the construction side doesn’t disrupt anything they’re doing in research, education, or campus life. This is where they excel.
We need to understand what the use is. We ask questions to understand why they do it, so maybe we can help provide better value. Because maybe the owners have described that they want something, and the architects are reacting to that, and they design what they know how to design.\
And then if we ask a question and have a different understanding, we can say “Hey, if this is what you’re trying to achieve, there might be a different way to make it happen.”
How does Messer see demand in the market segment?
I can tell you that the higher education segment is very strong for us, and as a company, especially in Nashville, there are a lot of opportunities that we’re tracking.
So obviously Vanderbilt is a strong player, as are Middle Tennessee State and Austin Peay State University. We work at Western Kentucky University also, and we run that work from our national office in Cincinnati, just because of the proximity there.
A lot of this is a result of the fact that most higher education institutions froze during the COVID-19 pandemic, because they were trying to figure out what do we do?
Probably more than any other market segment we work in, this meant that the tallest building dried up the most during that time period. And so I think we’ve just seen the pendulum swing back the other way, where there’s now some pent-up demand in terms of projects that are being planned or talked about.
How does Messer see itself in this market segment compared to its competition?
We are competing against the big domestic builders. We are a regional contractor, primarily the Midwest and Southeast, but have national experience and capabilities.
We are rooted in the community. Our kids go to these colleges, hopefully, so we want them to succeed.
We know what these universities and colleges mean in terms of being an economic engine for the region. When we select new offices to go to, we always want to make sure there is a good mix of market segments. And higher education is one of these, because we want them to have this economic engine.
