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Consider Design-Build Construction Services for Your Next Project

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Why should you consider design-build construction services for your next project? Design-build construction allows you to work with one contact during the span of your construction project, giving you the opportunity to save time and money while seeing the results you envisioned. From start to finish, your project will have a single point of responsibility.

Maryville construction firm, Leon Williams Contractors, has decades of experience in design-build services, and our process begins well before we break ground on projects. In the pre-construction phase of your project, we’ll find and evaluate potential sites and check for any possible issues that may arise. From there, we move forward with your project step-by-step in a team effort to accomplish building your finished design.

Real Teamwork

You have a vision of what you want to build, and Leon Williams Contractors is ready to work with you to build it. Communication is a huge component in making sure everyone is on the same page so delays can be prevented and the project can remain on schedule. It takes real teamwork to successfully complete a construction project, and the level of communication created by a design-build construction firm encourages a collaborative atmosphere for everyone involved.

Reduced Project Delivery Time

Would you prefer your construction project be finished on time? Of course! Choosing a design-build firm for your construction project will save you time. Because design-build construction simplifies the building process, there are likely to be fewer changes and delays during your project. The benefits of improved project communication will advance your timeline toward an on-time completion date.

More Value for Less Cost

We at Leon Williams Contractors take the necessary steps to make sure clients receive the most value for their budget while maintaining less cost. With our design-build construction services, you can achieve your goals of balancing the cost and value of your project. Our professionals know the ins and out of construction, and after 30 years, we’re especially familiar with managing construction expenses without sacrificing quality products and project design. 

If you’re looking for an experienced Maryville construction firm dedicated to building quality spaces, Leon Williams Contractors is ready to answer your questions. Contact us today online or call (865) 982-1734 to learn more about your design-build construction options.

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.

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.

A Great Year: Looking Back at the Accomplishments of 2019

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This has been an exciting year for Leon Williams Contractors. As 2019 draws to a close, we’re taking the time to reflect on all the great projects that we’ve had the opportunity to work on for our clients.

From the new Pellissippi State Community College welding shop to Wings Over Knoxville, the chain’s first location in Tennessee, this year has been filled with exciting firsts, great renovations and even the beginning of work on Etowah’s new city hall. Here are some highlights of a great year:

A New Face for Etowah Government

For the last few years, Etowah’s city government has been working from a small office north of town. Soon, though, they’ll be able to move into a new city hall, located next door to the historic L&N railroad depot. The look of the new building reflects the historic train station that’s been a southeastern landmark for more than a century. We’re excited to continue working on this project over the coming months and can’t wait until we open the doors on it next year.

Dining Halls, Welding Shops and Biotech, Oh My!

Pellissippi State Welding Shop It was a great year for construction projects and renovations, and we’re proud to have completed several for East Tennessee businesses and educational institutions. These projects included the new office of Allevia Technology and a new medical testing center for the Molecular Pathology Laboratory Network in Maryville, a fresh take on Carson-Newman University’s Stokely dining hall in Jefferson City and the conversion of a loading dock on Pellissippi State’s Strawberry Plains campus into a new welding shop and training space.

Helping Franchise Brands Expand

Throughout 2019, we continued to work with restaurant brands to expand their locations across East Tennessee. We built out the location for the new Wings Over Knoxville, the first Wings Over location in Tennessee, which held its grand opening in September.

Over in Lenoir City, we built a brand-new Which Wich Superior Sandwiches franchise location that offers the region’s first look at the concept’s new branding and interior design. This is the third location we’ve built for the franchise owner.

Farmers and Fireworks

At the first of the year, we prepared the former Goody’s location in Foothills Mall in Maryville to serve as a location for Farmers Home Furniture, a Georgia-based regional furniture chain.

We also helped get the Fireworks Superstore in Kodak, Tennessee, back in business after a landslide had damaged the facility, destroying some walls and interior spaces. We repaired the damage, and the store was able to reopen.

A Modern Collaboration for a Sacred Cause

We’re grateful to have had the chance to work with Studio Four Design on a project on Foothills Church campus, a brand new 32,000-square foot space that opened last year. This year, we were recognized for our work on that project with the 2019 Solomon Award for Church Design, an honor we share with our friends at Studio Four and Foothills Church. Faith is something we’re passionate about at Leon Williams, and we’re always happy to help a congregation create a building that fits their needs and glorifies their purpose.

More to Come in 2020

We love helping our East Tennessee neighbors with their building projects, no matter how large or small, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store as we move into the new decade. If you’ve seen our work and want to talk about your construction needs in the new year, we’d love to chat. Contact Leon Williams Contractors today.

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.

Shopping Malls are Changing

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Developers need construction flexibility

The retail apocalypse isn’t nigh. It’s happening now and shows no sign of stopping, forcing mall operators to rethink the way they do business.

Father and daughter spending a day in shopping mall

With more than 75,000 more stores expected to close throughout the United States by 2026, traditionally retail-centered commercial developments like malls are shifting focus to services and experiences, according to GlobeSt.com:

Mixed-use projects are stepping up to fill the void with underperforming malls. Live-work-play activities are animating retail centers, moving away from the islands of traditional retail.

These commercial pressures are encouraging developers and property managers to make creative choices, creating new malls experiences through diverse dining options, services and experiences. This can range from bowling alleys to grocery stores, gyms and dry cleaning — even incorporating nearby residential options.

Need for Experienced Contractors

As this new commercial playbook is being developed, developers and property managers will benefit from partnering with construction firms, like Leon Williams Contractors, that have a wide variety of commercial experience.

From transforming a former arcade and entertainment center, previously known as Thunderworld, into the elegant Foothills Church (FC) facility in Blount County, Tennessee, to building out new dining facilities at the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville and Chattanooga campuses, Leon Williams Contractors has decades of experience revamping spaces to fit new commercial needs. We’re also thoroughly experienced in building out new commercial spaces, including, most recently, three East Tennessee Which Wich® franchise locations.

Project Management for Any Need

Construction experience is just part of the equation. To be competitive, commercial construction projects must be completed on time and within budget, requiring consistent oversight of the construction management process.

To benefit our commercial clients, Leon Williams Contractors offers an extensive toolkit of services to trim costs while ensuring quality. This includes pre-construction consultation and design-build and value engineering expertise. Contact us to learn more.