Better Over Bigger: Inside Concord Projects with Nolan Ploegman

Nolan, welcome to the Building Manitoba Podcast.

It's great to have you here.

Yeah, thanks, Nathan.

It's an honor and a pleasure to be on it with you.

Concord Projects was founded in 1978 by Ted Petkau.

So just for listeners who don't know the company yet, could you talk about what does Concord do today, and how is that different from its roots and where it started with Ted?

Yeah, for sure.

Well, Concord Projects is a local Winnipeg-based and founded general contractor, construction management company, and sometimes called a design builder as well.

And yeah, very proud to be essentially just building buildings m- mostly in Manitoba.

Probably 90% of our projects are right here in our home province.

But we have built in Ontario, we have built in Saskatchewan, and we have built in Alberta.

Kind of following our client base.

Uh, wherever they ask us to build for them, we'll go.

But we're not bidding on projects in, in other provinces per se.

And yeah, Ted Petkau is my father-in-law, so I'm very lucky to be in the position that I am today, and it's all thanks to him.

He truly has set the vision, mission, values of this company, and I kinda view my role as continuing his legacy, carrying the torch.

And Ted founded the company really on the principle of getting the general contractor construction company involved in the project very early on in the process.

So where he worked before, uh, he's a structural engineer by training.

Where he worked before, they were bidding work.

So you would bid the project, get the job, contractor is awarded the project two weeks before it starts.

And so he saw an opportunity there, and he founded Concord on being collaborative, getting involved early, earning the client's trust, delivering, building a strong reputation, and being helpful while the project's being designed, and maybe flipping the script of a typical GC role on the project where you just build the building and do what we tell you to do.

So yeah, we, we've continued that approach and built a really strong... very proud to have built a strong list of repeat clients, a- and that's how Concord has grown over the years.

That's very cool.

Yeah, the organic growth is, uh, visible over time.

And can you just talk a little bit about, like, your beginnings with the company? I know y- you started, you know, 20 or so years ago with the company and coming from more of a finance background and not construction.