While BSI Constructors is proud to have completed significant projects for big names such as Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Wells Fargo Advisors (previously A.G. Edwards), we are equally proud of our work for many lesser known but highly successful businesses. BSI has performed single projects as large as $150 million. Yet we’ve earned the loyalty of many corporate clients on very small scale, fast track buildouts. Our corporate customers typically expect us to be an extension of their business. They want a teammate that can provide real world, real time information about cost and schedule that facilitates the right physical plant decisions for long term profitability.

As you can see below, our corporate experience includes new office construction, tenant buildout, data centers, parking structures, and hardscape.

Over the past several years, developers have been a growing part of our client base. As a group, developers have a reputation of being very demanding. We don’t mind “demanding.” In fact, we find that the clarity of purpose by our developer clients is very conducive to a no nonsense construction project. There is usually no question of the client’s goals. Their projects are usually driven by economics and schedule. That is not to say that first cost drives every decision. But if developers are going to spend more for an element, they need to clearly see the return on investment. BSI’s value analysis (which necessarily evaluates schedule implications) provides the tools for the developer to make the best decision for the project.

The gallery below offers a sampling of the many different types of work we have performed for developers including hotel, retail, restaurant, apartment, student housing, parking structures, and condominiums. These include both new construction and renovation.

Since our founding in 1972, educational buildings have been a big part of our business. Way back in 1976, our first $1 Million project was a high school building for the Hazelwood School District. Initially, public school work afforded BSI the opportunity to bid projects and build a reputation when getting opportunities from private clients was difficult for a new company. Building on successes in the public market opened doors for us in the private sector, leading to our first $20 million project (McDonnell Hall) for Washington University in 1990. Now we are proud of our long list of successes in both the public and private educational markets. We’ve delivered all types of educational facilities including world class laboratory buildings, academic buildings, libraries, auditoriums, performing arts centers, student housing, and athletic facilities for leading educational institutions.

We’ve performed projects for preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, universities, and graduate research departments. Take some time to browse the examples below.

Those most familiar with our work associate BSI Constructors with institutional construction. Even though this is only one of our primary client focus groups, many of the most recognizable institutional projects in St. Louis in the past twenty five years were constructed by BSI. Whether it is museums, theaters, auditoriums, libraries, religious institutions, public gardens, or universities, BSI has built its reputation in high quality, high profile projects. Click on any of the images below for a better look at what should be some pretty familiar structures.

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Those most familiar with our work associate BSI Constructors with institutional construction. Even though this is only one of our primary client focus groups, many of the most recognizable institutional projects in St. Louis in the past twenty five years were constructed by BSI. Whether it is museums, theaters, auditoriums, libraries, religious institutions, parks, public gardens, or universities, BSI has built its reputation in high quality, high profile projects. Click on any of the images below for a better look at what should be some pretty familiar structures.

Historic Restoration & Adaptive Reuse – Working in a City with an outstanding historic building stock, BSI has become a leader in the restoration and reuse of dozens of building on the U.S. Historic Register. Our understanding of the special challenges of historic buildings has helped us ensure that our clients have maximized their reimbursement through the historic tax credit process. Our ability to anticipate what most contractors don’t expect facilitates credible estimates early in the development process and minimizes the costly surprises usually inherent in this type of work.

Garden & Hardscape – With dozens of projects for the Missouri Botanical Garden, numerous projects for Forest Park Forever, and the recent completion of the nationally recognized Citygarden in downtown St. Louis, exterior landscape/hardscape projects have become an important niche for BSI. Attention to detail and quality is especially critical in projects that must withstand the vagaries of Midwestern winters throughout their useful lives.

Structural & Architectural Concrete – BSI’s roots are as a self-perform concrete company. It is an expertise that we maintain to this day. Whether it’s foundation walls, shear towers, structural decks, or architectural finish concrete, BSI has the experience and knowledge to deliver quality results every time. Our architectural concrete portfolio includes the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, designed by Tadao Ando, which is recognized as one of the world’s finest examples of as cast, smooth finish architectural concrete.

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How We Work

Our Attitude on Safety | Our Approach to Quality | What We Self Perform

Our Attitude on Safety

We worry about safety so you don't have to!  The safety of our clients' personnel, and those adjacent to our worksite always comes first.  Beyond that, many of our clients take a keen interest in the safety of the construction workers.  But why should they have to do that?  When you buy a car, you rightly focus on the car - not the safety records from the auto plant.  

When we build something for our clients, we understand that we "own" the safety responsibility for the project.  And we take that ownership very seriously.  With a commitment to worker safety that permeates throughout our entire company, BSI achieves safety statistics that are much better than the norm of our peers.  That means our workers compensation rates are lower, which translates into lower costs for our clients.  Most important, we want our trade workers to go home to their families in good health every night. 

Virtually every contracting firm touts their safety program, but BSI was the first general contractor in our four state Region VII to be admitted into the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program.  BSI was admitted by OSHA into this elite program after a lengthy and comprehensive process that culiminated in a detailed onsite evaluation of our commitment, practices, and results.

 

Our Approach to Quality

The measure of a contractor’s commitment to quality is not the process it employs, but rather the results it achieves!  If you look at our history of work in our primary market, no general contracting firm has produced a greater proportion of landmark, high quality buildings than BSI Constructors.   A few examples will help illustrate the point. 

  • When BSI was selected to build The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Tadao Ando), the Owner’s goal was a standard of architectural concrete quality never achieved in St. Louis.  Mission accomplished, according to world-renowned concrete expert Jim Shilstone who described the building as “one of the finest examples of achieving a high quality as-cast architectural concrete finish we have seen in the world.”
  • When the Latter Day Saints decided to build a temple in St. Louis, their reputation for an unwavering expectation of quality preceded them.  BSI was one of a very small group of local general contractors approved to bid the project.  BSI was awarded the contract, and according to the Director of Project Management for the Latter Day Saints, delivered the highest quality building of any he had seen in his many years of overseeing construction for the church.
  • When the Gateway Foundation wanted to transform the St. Louis landscape by developing a major sculpture park in the heart of downtown, they turned to BSI.  In spite of a necessarily aggressive schedule, it was clear that quality would be foremost.  The Gateway Foundation insisted on a meticulously constructed project that would truly withstand the test of time.   According to principal architect Warren Byrd of Nelson Byrd Woltz “As nationally recognized landscape architects we have worked on numerous notable projects throughout the United States and overseas.  I can state, without reservation that of all of our public and commercial works, this has been both the most satisfying and the most beautifully constructed.”

Obviously, we don’t achieve these types of results without extensive quality assurance procedures and testing protocols.  But it by taking ownership of the finished product, and maintaining a corporate culture committed to doing the right thing, that facilitates the construction of exceptional structures.

 

What We Self Perform

Our roots are as an old style general contractor that self performs a significant proportion of its work.   The trend in the industry has been towards “management only” contractors who rely on subcontractors for all of the execution.  We highly value the relationships with our subcontractors, and recognize their critical role in construction.  However, BSI is committed to maintaining the ability to self perform key components of the work.  Even when it is the best interest of the project to subcontract a work category that we are capable of self-performing, our detailed knowledge of how to actually do the work is invaluable in securing the right price.  And when the market doesn’t respond as we’d like, we are very capable of jumping in with our own tradesmen to execute the work in a cost-effective and high quality manner.  During preconstruction, a real builder can be much more effective than a broker in evaluating proposed design details for constructability and cost effectiveness. 

The primary types of work we perform with our own forces are structural concrete, architectural concrete, structural steel erection, miscellaneous metals installation, carpentry, specialties installation, selective demolition, hand excavation, and general debris removal/cleanup.