Premier Structures Inc.

Premier Structures Inc. (PSI) has been serving clients in northern Alabama since 1986. The business began as a pre-engineered steel building erector and expanded its expertise to become a general contractor. PSI has its headquarters in Athens, Alabama, and has provided integrated contracting services from the same location for more than 25 years.

Dan Mankins has been the president of PSI since 2008. He purchased the company in February 2013 and has worked diligently with his team to expand the operation. Over the last several years, Mankins and his colleagues have pursued new opportunities while fostering strong relationships with area developers, contractors and other strategic partners.

With a background in engineering, Mankins has worked in construction his entire career. He takes a hands-on approach to project management and remains heavily involved in building relationship and structures — as well as tracking company performance on the back end. He evaluates profit/loss statements, work-in-progress reports and feedback from employees and customers to measure his team’s success.

Broad expertise

While high-quality, efficient and safe performances are hallmarks of PSI, Mankins notes that there is something else that sets his company apart from other general contractors serving his region. “We self-perform over 50 percent of the work we do,” he explains. “Our team does concrete work, steel erection, sheet metal, carpentry work, painting and trim work.”

This in-house expertise has proven beneficial for the company. Over the years, Mankins and his team have taken on a range of construction projects throughout northern Alabama and beyond. “We’ve expanded our types of construction,” he says. “We do industrial construction as well as retail — those are our target markets. We’ve gotten into retail more recently and we just do the building shells, no fit-outs. There is a developer we’ve been doing business with for 20 years, and he got into retail with his business and took us with him.”

PSI has several ongoing projects in northern Alabama. The team is currently building an addition onto the Limestone County Jail as well as a new city hall for the City of Athens. “We’re doing some renovations to the Chevrolet dealership here in Athens as well,” Mankins adds. “We also just broke ground on a church building in town as well, which we’re building from the ground up.”

A few years ago during the recession, the PSI team traveled significantly more to take on projects throughout the eastern U.S. “We did a lot of military work,” Mankins recalls. “We did multiple government bases here, including Fort Stewart in Savannah, Georgia, Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, Fort Rucker in Enterprise, Alabama, and we even worked on a military base in New Jersey. It was quite the haul for that one. It was a peculiar project — the company we had been doing work for had hired somebody up there that had a lot of problems and we stepped in to get it done.”

Positive growth

2015 has been a strong year for PSI. The business had a full backlog for the remaining months. Mankins reports that while things may slow down a bit in 2016, he and his colleagues are working through budgets and proposals for new opportunities that will keep the team busy for the next year.

Before Mankins purchased the business, PSI kept to a limited market, doing all negotiated work — a single type of project over and over. “Once I came in and bought the business, we started reaching out and doing a lot of different types of construction,” he says. “We made our business easier by building a bonding program and doing bid work. We do twice the volume we used to do so it clearly is working out for us. We have doubled our revenue since 2008.”

As a business owner, Mankins takes great pride in seeing people grow in the company while contributing to the growth of the business. “We had a goal set to really build the company to a certain size — a five-year plan — and we are on track to most likely beat that goal, which is great,” he says. “We offer little incentives here and there for our guys as well. We reward our team members with bonuses and raises when they do good work and it has been a good year for that.”

As the business continues to make headway in its niche, Premier Structures Inc. continues to lead the way in quality, efficiency and value with in-house expertise and dedication.