Leon Williams Helped Create a New Landmark

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East Tennessee is proud of its history, and Leon Williams Contractors, a Maryville construction company, is proud to partner with local governments to create structures that honor that history.

We recently a completed a new 3,200-square-foot city hall in Etowah, Tennessee.  It’s on Tennessee Avenue, adjacent to the historic L&N Depot, a 114-year-old state landmark. We built the new one-story building to complement the depot, which currently houses the Etowah Chamber of Commerce and a railroad museum. The depot has been a centerpiece for the city, serving as a facility for public and private events, and is now paired with the city hall.

For the past few years, Etowah’s city government had been renting offices in a building north of downtown. That was after moving out of a space in the city’s Carnegie Library.

Now, the city boasts a great new building that replaces a vacant lot, complements the L&N Depot and supplements the historic character of the downtown area. We’re glad to give the city employees an excellent new workspace and to provide city residents with an attractive municipal building to be proud of.

We Can Help

At Leon Williams, we have a long history of working with governmental bodies and educational systems to create high-quality spaces. We’ll work with your organization to refine the scope of work and develop a reasonable and accurate budget ahead of time. Our experts will help identify potential cost savings in the design, materials and infrastructure.

We pride ourselves on our communication with stakeholders. We’ll make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to goals, timelines and expectations before a project begins. We also provide site assessment services to help avoid nasty surprises that require additional work after the fact, preventing expensive work delays.

For more information about Leon Williams Contractors, visit www.lwcontractorstn.com or call (865) 982-1734.

How an Experienced Construction Firm Can Prevent Common Problems

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Picture this: You’re a month from opening day for your new building, when your construction firm tells you that, due to mistakes in the process, you’ll need to open three weeks behind schedule. And you’ll need to spend thousands of dollars to do it.Modern skyscrapers in business district.

While this might sound like a nightmare, it can be a reality for developers and business owners across the country. Building projects have so many independent moving parts that, without a skilled and experienced construction firm at the helm, things can quickly go off course and remain unnoticed until it’s too late. But you can trust the Maryville commercial construction experts at Leon Williams Contractors to get things right the first time.

What Construction Problems Can I Encounter on my New Build?

By far one of the most common construction issues that can occur on a project are budget overruns. These aren’t limited to small, unlicensed contractors or inexperienced teams — well-planned projects like government buildings, infrastructure, airports and even the International Space Station have run over budget.

Part of the reason is that, when you’re building a project, small mistakes can add up into big problems down the road. Fixing these problems means more time on the jobsite, more money spent on materials and labor, and hours of lost time.

Even worse, these mistakes can pop up at the most inconvenient times. Right when you think you’re ready to open, a mistake in the process can mean a lengthy delay. For a small business, that means big trouble before you’ve even opened your doors.

What Can I Do to Prevent Construction Issues?

When you’re building a new home for your franchise or want a new office for your organization, you shouldn’t have to face that kind of pressure. You want your project to go smoothly from the start, and that’s where we come in. Leon Williams has more than three decades building for clients in East Tennessee, and we’ve gotten pretty good at preventing problems before they start. Contact Leon Williams Contractors online or give us a call at (865) 982-1734 to learn more.

Protecting the Community During the Coronavirus Pandemic

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Leon Williams Contractors is dedicated to protecting its employees and the public from the spread of COVID-19. We enforce workplace standards and procedures as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to prevent infection.

To protect our workers and clients, we are limiting the number of individuals present onsite and requiring they practice social distancing. We’ve also distributed supplies of disinfectant and hand sanitizer to each jobsite.

In addition, all workers are required to clean their hands frequently and anyone with a temperature or symptoms of sickness is not allowed to work. We continue to monitor the situation and follow guidelines provided by city, state and federal governments.

The construction industry as a whole takes coronavirus seriously. Leon Williams remains committed to protecting our communities during this time.

As a provider of essential services, Leon Williams Contractors is ready to help with your commercial construction needs. For more information, see us online or give us a call at (865) 982-1734.

Leon Williams Contractors Makes Franchise Build-Outs Easy

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So, you’ve decided to open a franchise restaurant location. Congratulations! At Leon Williams Contractors, we’re proud to support local business owners and use our Maryville commercial construction experience to  build quality locations for new establishments in East Tennessee. But there are a few things every new franchise location owner should know about the build-out process to avoid surprises and help things go just a little more smoothly.

Avoiding Costly Mistakes Franchise build-outs can be difficult, but they don't have to be with LWC

At Leon Williams, we work hard to provide the highest value we can. By helping assess and optimize the site as well as the location, we can help clients make the most of their investment. Site assessments ensure that the property is appropriately prepared before construction, so you can be sure that your site and your business are in perfect sync.

Keep Things Running Smoothly

We’ll work closely with your design or corporate team to help keep the project running smoothly from start to finish. Our real-world experience helps us provide accurate project timelines and avoid potential problems. And we’ll keep you updated during construction, so you never feel like you’re being left out of the loop.

We know you have a strict timeline, and failing to open on time can jeopardize your business. The Leon Williams team will work hard to help you meet your deadlines and prevent budget overruns or a delayed opening.

You don’t have to take our word for it, though. Leon Williams has an excellent track record working with franchises in the East Tennessee area, from Which Wich to Wings Over Knoxville. You can see a full list of our recent projects on our website.

If you’re a franchise owner looking to start your buildout, put us on your list. You can give us a call at (865) 982-1734, or contact Leon Williams Contractors online to learn more.

Avoid construction headaches with Leon WIlliams Contractors.

The Top 3 Construction Headaches, and How to Avoid Them

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When beginning a new commercial construction project, it’s easy to be unaware of some common challenges. With more than 30 years as a Maryville commercial construction company, we’ve worked tirelessly to provide superior service, protecting our clients across the East Tennessee region from headaches. Here are a few of the most common mistakes to avoid:

A Bad Relationship Between Structure and Site

Where a building sits on its lot is almost as important as its construction. Whether a client is building a house, a church or a fast food franchise, site design is a critical part of how the building looks, acts and behaves. For some projects, the way a building is positioned can even have an effect on its success. The site can be optimized to make a building work better for its occupants, no matter what purpose It serves.

Budgets That Keep Growing and Growing

When a project becomes more complex, those costs get transferred to the client. With value engineering, we can help figure out ways to finish our clients’ projects on budget and without compromising on quality. It’s just one of the things we’re doing to keep our clients happy with every job.

Unlicensed Contractors that Disappear, or Worse

If you use an unlicensed contractor for your project, you’re playing a very expensive game of roulette. Whether they get injured on the job, damage materials or structures, install code-breaking electrical or plumbing infrastructure or just skip town with the check, unlicensed contractors are never the safest choice for your investment. We can’t tell you how to spend your money, but as a leading Maryville commercial construction company, we know what we’d choose: a licensed, bonded and insured contractor who you can trust to get the job done right.

When you need a contractor for your next East Tennessee project, choose the experts at Leon Williams Contractors. We’ve been a trusted name in the region for more than 30 years, and we have the experience to back up our reputation. Contact Leon Williams to learn more.

Offset rising material costs with this advice.

3 Strategies to Offset Rising Material Costs

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Construction material prices have been volatile in recent years, but they continue to rise overall. Combined with economic uncertainty related to tariffs, it can be a challenging time for the construction industry.

Along with increasing materials prices, delays and mishaps can drive construction project costs past the initial budget. To combat these issues, Leon Williams Contractors has put strategies in place to help offset unpredictable costs and deliver more value to our clients.

Build for the Site

Successful builders create structures that work with the sites they’re on, rather than fighting against them. By assessing every site for compatibility with the structures our clients want to build, we ensure parking, traffic flow, even noise and light pollution don’t interfere with local infrastructure and existing development. Choosing the right site, using the right materials, and clearing up any potential issues with environmental and geotechnical hazards before starting construction can save thousands in engineering and remediation costs later.

Design for Efficiency

Leon Williams Contractors also offers design-build construction services, which can save clients a lot of money on materials over the course of a project. A design-build construction team can make more informed decisions about materials and reduce waste compared to traditional building. When clients aren’t paying for excessive material waste, especially the kind incurred when solving construction mistakes, material costs overall can be significantly reduced.

Engineer for Value

When clients begin a renovation or new construction, they stake a lot of their own money, and the money of their investors, on the success of the project. Difficult designs that rely on expensive or complex materials can be a major financial headache. Leon Williams Contractors uses value engineering techniques to give clients an honest appraisal of the value and longevity of every solution we provide, allowing them to save money without sacrificing quality.

If you want to avoid the pain of rising materials costs, we can help. Contact Leon Williams Contractors today to learn more.

Design Build construction offers many benefits over the traditional method.

How Design-Build Construction Can Improve Any Project

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For today’s commercial developers, the choice between using design-build construction services or using traditional methods can make or break a project.

Historically, architects and designers have been siloed in the industry, designing projects for their clients but often having very little say or supervision in their construction. The task of turning drawings and plans into real spaces has fallen squarely to the contractor, who is responsible for the interpretation of the technical plans, changing, tweaking and modifying them as necessary to deliver a finished product.

While this method has its advantages it also carries a higher risk of mistakes and disagreements among the designer, contractor and client.

Advantages of Design-Build Construction

Luckily, there’s a better way forward. Design-build construction represents a premium model for commercial construction. By letting designers and contractors collaborate from the start, projects can often be finished on time and on budget, with fewer costlier delays and overruns.

Design-build construction uses coordination from the start of the process to make better, more informed decisions as the work progresses. This relationship between the designer and builder makes projects more efficient by minimizing paperwork, delays and the time it takes to fix problems with intermittent communication.

But what if your project doesn’t require a complex new building, but instead just involves redesigning an existing space? Here, too, design-build makes sense. By planning all parts of the project up front, even jobs as simple as a restaurant renovation can be improved. A focus on collaboration eliminates delays arising from slow back-and-forth communication between independent designers and contractors. If design changes are necessary, the entire project team can be updated immediately.

We Can Help

Overall, the largest benefit of a design-build process is efficiency, and that benefits every job, not just the big ones. As a design-build construction firm, we offer more efficient and effective construction processes, saving our clients from the added expense of delays and budget mistakes. If you’re interested in working with us on your next project, contact Leon Williams Contractors today.

Designing the Right Site in the Right Way

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Finding the right site for a new commercial facility can be hard enough, but businesses also have to worry about finding the right design. It takes planning to ensure sites are designed to properly accommodate customers while eliminating or minimizing nuisance problems for adjoining properties.

Site Assessment

Leon Williams Contractors offers preplanning and site assessment services to help businesses find the perfect sites for new facilities. This helps protect our clients from unpleasant surprises like insufficient utilities, environmental hazards, and geotechnical issues.

We can also help determine if the proposed site is large enough to accommodate the facility. There are many factors that need to be taken into account, including required setbacks, green space requirements, adequate parking, and various buffer zones.

Location is important, too. If you’re interested in building a retail location, is there enough traffic to justify it? Is the property sufficiently accessible? If it’s hard for drivers to get into or out of the property, it will cut into your sales.

Be a Good Neighbor

Once a site is selected, the design needs to balance convenience for patrons and visitors while minimizing any potential nuisance problems for neighboring properties or nearby residential areas. Adequate parking and traffic flow are vital. The design of the site should factor in ways to reduce noise and light pollution from the property, preventing community complaints.

We Can Help

The team at Leon Williams Contractors has decades of experience in commercial construction project management. We can help your company find the best site that is built out in the best way. Our proven design-build construction expertise has been put to work in commercial projects all around East Tennessee.

We’re ready help build the best commercial facility for your business. Let us help. Contact Leon Williams Contractors to find out more.

Design-Build Communication Advantages

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The success of commercial construction projects depends on teamwork and the ability of all the parties involved to cooperate and communicate. This doesn’t always happen.

In traditional commercial construction projects, a developer starts by hiring an engineer or architect to design a facility, and then puts it out to bid to find a contractor to build it. This model often leads to confrontational projects. If something goes wrong, the designer and contractor can end up trying to blame each other. If the plans are missing details or information, the contractor can request additional funds and/or time in order provide the additional work. Often the contractor is forced to play this game in order to have a competitive edge against other bidding contractors.

What is Design-Build Construction?

There is another way. Commercial developers can enlist the help of a design-build construction team — meaning a construction firm works with a designer from the start of the project. As Design-Build Institute of America notes, the design-build model can allow for a more streamlined, efficient construction process:

The owner manages only one contract with a single point of responsibility. The designer and contractor work together from the beginning, as a team, providing unified project recommendations to fit the owner’s schedule and budget. Any changes are addressed by the entire team, leading to collaborative problem-solving and innovation, not excuses or blame-shifting. While single-source contracting is the fundamental difference between design-build and the old ways, equally important is the culture of collaboration inherent in design-build.

Improved Teamwork and Communication

At Leon Williams Contractors, we’ve found that a design-build construction approach offers significant advantages to our clients in East Tennessee. It allows for a higher level of cooperation and coordination between the contractor and the designer.

A design-build construction team can make better, more informed decisions, improve the efficiency of work that needs to be done — and minimize the paperwork, delays, and cost of fixing problems that can result from coordination problems between two companies.

We have decades of design-build construction experience in East Tennessee. If you want to learn more about the advantages of partnering with a design-build construction team, contact Leon Williams Contractors today.

Don’t Trust Unlicensed Contractors

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When it comes to your new commercial project, who should you trust to do the job right?

If your business is looking to start a new construction project or to renovate an existing commercial building, you’ll naturally be looking to get the most out of your money. When weighing costs and budget, it can be tempting to just go with the lowest bidder.

If you make that choice without properly checking their qualifications, though, you’re courting danger. That cut-rate contractor might be unlicensed, and if you end up hiring them, you’re putting both the project and your business at risk.

Why is hiring a licensed contractor important?

So, what’s the big deal about hiring an unlicensed contractor? You’ll save some money, right?

Wrong. Hiring an unlicensed contractor for a commercial project is the same as writing a blank check. If something goes wrong, your business will be on the hook for damages and loss. If the workmanship is shoddy, you’ll have no recourse.

In the event of mishaps during construction, you want to be sure your contractor is licensed and insured, so that you are not held liable for accidents. For instance, if a contractor’s worker was injured on the job site, you would want to know that the contractor has insurance to cover the worker’s injuries. In the case of a major accident, this could become extremely costly financially.

When it comes to paperwork and record-keeping, hiring a licensed contractor will provide you with peace of mind that they are conducting business according to best practices and have passed all the requirements of the governing body overseeing commercial contractor licensing.

Experience and training

A licensed commercial contractor employs trained workers who have experience and skills that keep a jobsite safe and make sure the work is done under the supervision of highly qualified construction managers to avoid accidents and shoddy workmanship. The best licensed contractors also work hard to stay up-to-date with the best and most efficient construction techniques.

The bottom line is, if you are unhappy with the work of an unlicensed commercial contractor or they provided subpar work and skipped town, you’re just out of luck. Don’t be fooled, hire a licensed commercial contractor like Leon Williams Contractors, and always check references before working with any contractor. Ready to learn more? Contact Leon Williams today.