Structures & Interiors: Building Lasting Relationships with Unprecedented Value

Grady Herzog and Mike Lease established Structures & Interiors (S&I) to bring a highly personalized level of customer service to healthcare construction, powered by over 50 years of combined experience. The S&I team of 15 professionals compliment the expertise behind Herzog and Lease to deliver nothing but the best by always working together. S&I tackles every project by leveraging the team’s collaborative skills to achieve the vision of the project owner with ease.

The S&I team specializes in providing general contracting and project management services to both renovation and new construction projects in a variety of commercial sectors, especially in healthcare market segments. The Texas-based company maintains headquarters in Southlake, though Dallas-Fort Worth accounts for the majority of S&I’s work volume. The team is happy to work with clients within a 400- to 500-mile radius of Southlake, and even into Oklahoma for such services.

Happenstance brought both Herzog and Lease to the medical construction industry years ago, after the housing market crashed in the 1980s. The transition prompted both Herzog and Lease to look for new opportunities beyond homebuilding and carpentry, respectively. The two go-getters spent the next 10 years or so working for the same healthcare construction company, one that happened to be owned by a large hospital system.

“We firmly believe that the projects we work on fundamentally belong to our clients, not to S&I,” explains Herzog, executive vice president of S&I. “We just felt that we could provide the same level of expertise, a high-quality product and a very personal level of customer service at a more competitive cost if we worked as a smaller organization with less overhead.”

Specialized Expertise

Even for a small business, S&I’s portfolio reflects an extensive work history of completed projects for orthodontic practices, dental offices, optical facilities, veterinary care facilities, oncology clinics and imaging centers. S&I also works with clients to build special care facilities.

“We pride ourselves on understanding what our clients need and for making the construction process as easy on them as possible,” says Herzog. “We’ll meet with them afterhours or on weekends because, for many of our clients, that’s the only time they have.”

Furthermore, engaging each client early on ensures the S&I team can assemble an accurate estimate projection for the cost of construction when given even the most basic details. S&I’s corporate philosophy stresses that it is the team’s duty to know which questions to ask, rather than expecting the client to provide all of the details up front.

“Just like patients expect medical professionals to be the experts and have the answers, we feel our role is to be the construction experts with all the answers,” asserts Herzog.

Smoothing Progress

Herzog, Lease and the rest of the team’s mentality solidifies the company’s change-order avoidance policy, as S&I insists on working with only trusted, reliable, licensed and insured subcontractors.

Experienced subcontractors still bid for projects to ensure a competitive price, but S&I’s extra experience on site provides additional oversight on projects with highly complex mechanical, medical gas and electrical systems. The combined project team thereby spends less time overcoming logistical snags on site, and moves swiftly to deliver each project as promised.

The team holds regular meetings with subcontractors, clients and its own superintendents to ensure each group remains informed and engaged throughout the construction process for each project. S&I also follows up on a project by sending in a professional photographer to document the final result and by making time to meet with clients and as for feedback and a referral, if appropriate.

S&I does not claim to be the cheapest option in town, but the team remains confident. S&I instead is focused on leveraging a project team’s combined expertise to build the greatest value for each client, proving worthy of its pricing.

No Ordinary Builder

The evidence of S&I’s personal service lies in its portfolio of completed projects and the degree of specialized knowledge involved in delivering a final product of which to be proud. Highlights among S&I’s portfolio include Arlington’s Animal Eye Clinic, which provides specialties like laser eye surgery and cataracts-corrective procedures for pets.

In another case, S&I lent its services to a pediatric dentistry client that requested a travel theme for the building’s interior. S&I delivered a waiting room equipped with a runway mural at the entrance and a propeller-like ceiling fan in the waiting room. In addition, every treatment room boasts a unique theme, including a beach-themed room with painted palm trees garnishing the wall.

S&I also served as the general contractor for the construction of Lustig Orthodontics in Keller, Texas. The orthodontics center provides a full-scale orthodontic practice set in the American frontier, complete with a wagon-wheel chandelier and covered wagon in the waiting room, again resenting S&I’s attention to detail.

A fully formed Wild West orthodontic office for a three-time orthodontic client is also on S&I’s list of notable projects. “Even the cabinets were painted to look rustic, and our crews painted stripes over the mirror at the tooth-brushing station so it looked there were jail bars over it,” adds Herzog.

Nevertheless, Herzog insists that whimsy isn’t the only contributing factor to a truly memorable project. “The best projects are the ones where we’re able to keep the client involved, engaged and excited throughout construction so they can see for themselves how much effort we put in to making the project theirs,” opines Herzog.

S&I’s signature approach appears to be working, as the company continues to prosper today. According to Herzog, S&I averaged a 90-percent repeat and referral client rate and was also named Southlake, Texas, area’s Commercial Builder of the Year in 2005. Herzog hopes to maintain a strong foothold in the years to come, buying the team time to position Structures & Interiors for greater opportunities and a wealth of satisfied clients.