Spokane general contractor Divcon Inc. is expecting a work volume of about $20 million for 2014, its best year ever, says President Shane Miller. 

John Miller, Divcon chairman and Shane’s father, says the work increase is due partly to the company’s expansion into tilt-up concrete construction, which it first began in the late 1990s.

“The tilt-up portion is the fastest-growing (construction) segment in the U.S.,” he says. Tilt-up construction involves designing, pouring, and doing finishes on a building’s concrete walls in a horizontal position, then craning them into place. 

Shane Miller says Divcon’s projected work volume for this year is up $8 million from 2013 and also includes some backlogged work contracts that came through late last year. 

Divcon’s latest tilt-up effort involves fabricating and installing  insulated walls, Miller says, which have two outer layers of concrete and an inner foam layer. 

Structural concrete, full buildings, and interior improvements form what Shane Miller calls the company’s main “trifecta” of services. 

“People think of us as exterior builders, but we do more interior improvements than anything else,” he says. “That one’s been a mainstay since the early ’80s.” 

Divcon, which has 38 employees, also offers tenant improvement, pre-development, design-to-build, and cast-in-place concrete services. The company often uses the latter technique when constructing parking garage structures, Shane Miller says. The techniques used for the tilt-up concrete construction correspond in some ways with the cast-in-place concrete work, he says. 

“It takes a little more training to deliver that at a quality level that clients want and deserve,” he says. “The skill set from guys working tilt-up concrete dovetails into that. It gives our employees some upward mobility and more skill sets.”

The company’s current projects include subcontracting on Bellevue, Wash.-based Odom Corp.’s 200,000-square-foot warehouse project on the West Plains and general contracting services on the 64,000-square-foot Meadowwood Three building in the Meadowwood Technology Campus building in Liberty Lake. They also include a 23,000-square-foot repair and service building on the West Plains  for Kent, Wash.-based Thermo King Northwest Inc., and a 12,000-square-foot professional building located at the intersection of 29th Avenue and Southeast Boulevard on the South Hill, owned by Spokane-based 29th Street Investments LLC.

Divcon was founded by John Miller and his wife Susan in the basement of their Spokane home in 1976, John Miller says. 

“We’ve done a variety of work over the years and progressed by adding lots of specialties,” he says. 

The company got its start constructing athletic fields, campgrounds, and parks, Miller says. When those government-funded projects slowed down, Divcon began to do more building and design projects, he says. 

“Clients kept asking for more, we call them, ‘expertises,’” he says. 

In the 1990s, the company’s main projects were cellular phone towers, Shane Miller says. 

“It was a mass build-out; then that market dried out,” he says. 

After the company decided to become a tilt-up specialist in the late 1990s, it went from constructing one or two tilt-up buildings a year to five or six a year currently, he says. 

“It’s been interesting to watch the growth in that sector,” Miller says.

One thing that distinguishes Divcon, he claims, is that it often works as a subcontractor for other general contractors, including some of its competitors.

“We focus on skill sets other contractors have shed, and then they hire us to do them,” Miller says. “We assist them in having the view of the whole job in mind.” 

John Miller says he believes the company’s experience as both a subcontractor and general contractor make it desirable partner for developers. 

“It’s one of the reasons we can work with developers; we have a developer mindset,” he says. “It’s not about the lowest cost; it’s about the highest value.”

The company has about eight developers and eight to 10 general contractors that it works with in the Spokane area, Miller says.  Shane Miller says that for 2014, he estimates Divcon will be the general contractor on about half of its jobs, and a subcontractor on the remaining half. 

“That blend can go as low as 30 percent general contractor and as high as 70 percent general contractor,” he says. “This year it just happens to be in the middle.”

Shane Miller also says Divcon works hard to maintain a cordial relationship with the companies it subcontracts for, some of which are its direct competitors on other jobs. 

“When we’re on the team, we’re on the team,” he says. “It’s about finding the best solution for the project.”

Divcon also is continuing work on the Pinecroft Business Park, at 12310 E. Mirabeau Parkway in Spokane Valley, through Pinecroft LLC. The company currently is constructing a 10,000-square-foot, roughly $1 million building that will house some back-office pharmacy operations here for Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen Co., Shane Miller says. The company also is pursuing more tenants for the business park’s other eight buildings. 

“We’re on the cusp of some larger, build-to-suit type leases, but I can’t say who they’re for at this point,” he says.

The company also recently has gone through a leadership and ownership transition, from John Miller to Shane Miller, he says. Divcon retained many of its repeat customers through the transition, which also has helped the company stay on its feet, Miller says. 

“We had a very successful transfer of both ownership and leadership within the company, and we’ve been able to keep it customer-centric and have a continuation of culture and flow,” he says. 

In February, Divcon became the fifth company in the U.S. to be certified in tilt-up construction by the Tilt-Up Construction Association, a Mount Vernon, Iowa-based nonprofit trade organization. To receive the certification, companies had to complete multiple tilt-up projects, meet specific quality control standards, and present third-party verification of its tilt-up projects, among other requirements.