(L-R) are Matt Flowers, Alta Equipment; Paul Thompson, president of Thompson Builds Inc.; and Jeff Thompson, Thompson Builds Inc.
(Photo courtesy of Alta Equipment.)
Thompson Builds Inc., owned by Paul Thompson, is a general contractor and design build firm near Rochester, N.Y., involved in all types of excavating and construction work, both residential and commercial.
The company, which has been in business for more than 20 years, is primarily focused on central and western New York but has been known to tackle the right project just about anywhere in the state.
The company also is known for having an array of highly talented employees who are skilled in all aspects of the building trades.
The design build model at Thompson is noted for bringing together its design team and construction professionals in collaborative efforts with an end result that helps project owners control costs. Many aspects of the project can typically be kept in house, including excavating, parking, utilities, storm water management, all masonry work, as well as rough and finished carpentry. The company has completed a wide variety of projects, including high-end residential homes, medical facilities, educational facilities and commercial buildings.
The company was founded in 2001, at a time when the world was facing a lot of uncertainty. Yet, despite the difficult climate of the time, the company was able to get off to a good start and begin building a name for itself.
Over the next couple of decades, Thompson Builds experienced strong growth and was about to make a significant transformation heading into 2020.
"We had purposely started a marketing campaign to transition into a specific area of work, to transition the company into low-rise, private warehouses, commercial facilities and office-type buildings," Thompson said. "COVID hit us exactly at the time when we had a significant amount of backlog, forcing us to switch gears and put on the brakes. Fortunately, we were able to transition back to our roots with some smaller projects and word-of-mouth type businesses.
"We were able to keep our employees busy for the better part of a year while we worked on those projects," he added. "Fortunately, none of our guys had to stay home during the pandemic and we were able to keep things afloat. The projects that were delayed in 2020 as a result of the pandemic ended up coming through for us in the following years and our marketing campaign and targeted growth efforts started to pay off. As a result, the last few years have been very good for us.
"We have run a very tight ship to get where we are today, but we have also reached a critical point of needing to expand our personnel. Project management staff, field staff, office staff are all in high demand today. From what I understand everyone is dealing with those challenges."
In August 2022, Thompson Builds was working on a project building a facility for a John Deere dealership called LandPro Equipment. The 52,000-sq.-ft. facility sits on a 10-acre site, including service bays for servicing lawn tractors as well as large ag equipment, parts storage, office and retail space and a 15,000-sq.-ft. warehouse for storage space.
These types of projects have become typical for Thompson Builds. With Thompson's diverse background it was able to do 100 percent of the sitework on this project. Digging and pouring the foundations, installation of all utilities, complete construction of the facility right down to the carpentry, doors and millwork.
Working on the site was a Volvo EC160E excavator as well as a Volvo EC220E excavator, both purchased new from Alta Equipment, as well as a Volvo ECR355E with GPS and full automatics from Alta Equipment's rental fleet.
"These two excavators are actually the first new pieces of excavating equipment we have ever purchased," Thompson said. "We have owned some used equipment in the past, including a 2008 Volvo that had about 12,000 hours on it that served us very well, which is one of the reasons we felt very comfortable purchasing these two new Volvo machines.
"Our total experience with Volvo and Alta Equipment has been a positive one," he added. "Parts availability has always been very strong; they have never really let us down. Certainly, COVID and supply chain disruptions have created challenges for everyone, but Alta has come through for us.
"With these two new machines, we purchased Alta and Volvo's service plan, so for the next two years all of our fluids and filters and related maintenance is taken care of by Alta, and typically most of that work is done on our job sites."
Thompson works closely with Matt Flowers of Alta Equipment and has been extremely impressed with his vast knowledge of equipment across the board.
"It doesn't matter if it's the 2005 mini-excavator that we have or our new machines, it seems as though any piece of machine that we bring up to Matt — whether we are looking to trade it or if we have a problem — Matt has a solution. If he doesn't have an immediate answer, he is typically back to us within a half an hour or so with an answer or putting us in touch with a specialist who has the answers. That is extremely valuable to us. Our background is not mechanics; it's not equipment; it's not servicing equipment, so Matt's background is very valuable to us."
Thompson Builds currently is transitioning into GPS equipment with Trimble working in conjunction with the Volvos.
"That is going very well for us. As we have grown this business it's very difficult to balance decisions. At times we have purchased used equipment because it is the most economical decision. It's also important to us to project a good image and to have reliable equipment on the job so, more recently we have purchased new equipment.
For more information, visit www.thompsonbuilds.com and www.altaequipment.com.
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