Why Design-Build Saves Time and Money in Commercial Construction | Joshua Munns

Joshua Munns (00:00)
We use great technology in all of our project management. We use technology in all of our bidding processes to dissect plans and look for issues and problems. And I think general contractors and developers alike who embrace this AI technology and know how to use it are going to be the future of the industry. And if you don’t, you’re going to get left behind because whether you like it or not, AI is here and it’s only going to get better.

Scott Bursey (01:56)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey.

And today we’re sitting down with Josh Munns the president of Schell Creek Construction. In an industry where deadlines and budgets are constantly shifting, Josh has built a reputation across Nevada for precision, transparency, and a quality first approach to commercial and industrial builds. Whether it’s navigating complex infrastructure or large scale design builds, he knows what it takes to get a project across the finish line. Josh, welcome to the show.

Joshua Munns (02:27)
Thanks for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (02:29)
It is just awesome having you here. And before we dive into the market dynamics, please give our audience the story of your journey. How did you get into your career and where are you now?

Joshua Munns (02:40)
Well, I think like a lot of people in construction, we were all kind of born into it. Not a lot of us picked construction in the past. So I was fortunate enough to have a mom who started a construction company at the age of 23. I was four years old and she started selling windows across Northern Nevada and grew that company up over the years to over 22 million in sales and was the largest.

single window distributor in the US under one roof for a very long time. And so I grew up in the industry with a single mom running a business. I get picked up from school and go to the office and be in the shop cutting glass and building screens and kind of worked in that company and grew up in there. And then I decided to go out on my own and start my own construction company in 2008. And I’ve been doing that ever since, doing general construction, general contracting for commercial, residential, small remodels. And currently today we’re a full service general

contractor doing ⁓ large-scale commercial and industrial projects. So we don’t do a lot of residential anymore, but we do a lot of ⁓ retail, big commercial, industrial projects across the entire state of Nevada. And recently have started our own development company doing our own development of our own projects, acquiring land, designing the projects, and then bringing those to life ⁓ for either to flip and sell or to flip and hold. It just depends on the project itself, but ⁓ it’s a nice transition.

from where I’ve been to where we want to go and that is in development and building our own projects.

Scott Bursey (04:07)
That’s fantastic. Wow. And that’s in the blood. What a story that is. Josh, you’re a big proponent of the design build model and vertical integration in a market like Reno, where labor and supply chains are constantly in the flux. How much of your build on quality promises actually results of you taking more of the project life cycle in-house to maintain control over the outcome?

Joshua Munns (05:22)
Well, I think, you know, we’ve come across several projects in our past where a developer and owner has this idea of what they want to build and they go see an architect and the architect draws their dream and their vision. But there’s no coordination with a general contractor, anybody else who’s actually going to be building it. And you see these things that are designed way out of budget or way out of stretch because architects have this vision of this beauty without the idea of a budget in mind. And so when you do a design build and you bring in a general contractor early on, you can really work

the processes of what can and can’t be done, what’s feasible, what’s expensive, where can we save money, and we’ve seen these examples over and over again. So having that design-build relationship, having a budget in mind, and having an architect on board, and knowing how to fit these things together, we get really successful projects that meet or go below budget just based on different innovations and different ideas on how you can save or how you can build. You see it with a lot of prefabricated materials these days.

The

industry is changing and bringing new technologies to the industry. And I think you’re seeing a lot of innovations that are saving money in the field ⁓ because of prefabrication and pre-planning that’s allowing these things to go up faster and more affordably because workforce is so strained in the field. If you can do more in a warehouse and less in the field, you’re going to save money. So there’s a lot of different ways to approach that design, build and having the idea in the beginning rather than trying to fix something that’s already been drawn.

saves time and money over and over again.

Scott Bursey (06:53)
Absolutely. Makes perfect sense and that’s great perspective. What’s some of the company’s strengths right now?

Joshua Munns (07:00)
So I think for us, our strengths are really adapting to technology and bringing in tools that help us to be more efficient in our construction and our process. For a long time, construction has been kind of the old school mentality. I kind of, do it my way and I’ve got my spreadsheets or my handwritten books and ⁓ utilizing project management software, utilizing AI in our company is a huge part, especially on the bidding side of processes. ⁓ So anything we can do to streamline our efficiencies on the front

and to make construction easier as we go is really where we’re focused on. I think where our strengths are really at.

We use great technology in all of our project management. We use technology in all of our bidding processes to dissect plans and look for issues and problems. And I think general contractors and developers alike who embrace this AI technology and know how to use it are going to be the future of the industry. And if you don’t, you’re going to get left behind because whether you like it or not, AI is here and it’s only going to get better.

Scott Bursey (07:59)
The big takeaway I’m getting from you is being able to adapt. Josh, what major market risk or threat are you watching most closely right now as we sit here today?

Joshua Munns (08:02)
It’s a must.

Well, I think for us, we see here today, you know, I think my biggest concern that I have is cost of materials and where those are going to head. We’re in a very uncertain time in our world, not alone our country with all the geopolitical issues that are happening across our world. And you see gas prices, the highest they’ve been ever. I paid $5.90 a gallon for diesel yesterday. And, you know, nobody likes to see that at the pump. When you go fill up your tank and it’s $160 to fill up your tank, that hurts.

think about where that goes is that goes down the line to everywhere else, whether it’s manufacturing, transportation, know, all these oils go into a lot of our products. So, you know, we’re looking at a 67,000 square foot pre-manufactured metal building right now, and I’m very nervous to see where that price is going to go if I don’t get this building ordered and secured right away. What is my price increase going to look like if I order that in the next month? And so being aware of how these prices and these things

shift in the industry is really important and critical to budgets, especially when you’re talking large scale steel products, concrete, every building material that goes into construction is affected by gas and oil. And I think that’s for me, that’s our biggest focus right now is where we see these things going and how do we plan for it. ⁓ Because if you’re bidding the job today, well, sorry, let’s go back. If you’re bidding the job in November or December and you’re looking to start that project next month, your prices are not going to

the same as what you had. So you really need to be aware of where those are going to head and how that’s going to change. So that’s my biggest ⁓ biggest kind of concern now is material prices and where they’re going to go.

Scott Bursey (09:48)
If you could tell us a little bit about Reno and how it’s evolved, please.

Joshua Munns (10:26)
Yeah, know, I was born and raised in Reno. I’ve been here my entire life and I’ve seen it from a small town with a couple freeways running through town to we’ve grown dramatically. have, population has skyrocketed, but the biggest effect that Reno has had in our growth is all these major companies coming in from all around the world. have, it’s called TRIC, the Tahoe Reno Industrial Complex. It’s a USA parkway and we have some of the biggest companies in the world that are out there now.

Tesla out there, we have Panasonic out there, you have huge distribution facilities, Google has a massive facility they’re putting out there, Apple has come into town and built a huge facility out in that way as well, so you have these huge companies that are coming in and that’s brought a lot of people in as well and as a state with no income tax you’re seeing a lot of influx from California and other states so we’re growing like crazy and what that’s doing is it’s changing the center of the town to be

completely different from what it was designed to be. ⁓ We have I think four data centers planned to come in here in the next couple years and so that’s going to change the landscape of our area as well. And so you’re seeing a lot of change to what the needs of the city are and not even housing but just in business-wise and all the people that are coming in and infrastructure and roads and utilities. It’s all changing and this town is growing unbelievably right now.

Scott Bursey (11:51)
It’s a good time to be in Reno.

Joshua Munns (11:53)
It is.

Scott Bursey (11:54)
And Josh, if you could walk us through what is your most valuable non-deal related metric perhaps right now, determining the health of your enterprise.

Joshua Munns (12:05)
⁓ I think it has to do probably with forecasting where we want to go and what we want to see, what’s out there, what opportunities are ahead of us, and just staying aware of where the business sits today and where we’re going to go, not getting too far ahead of ourselves because things change. We’re in a good spot now. The city is growing. Things are happening, but those things do change. So keeping an eye on where the business is today and how we can steadily grow and steadily increase revenues and increase developments that we’re doing.

on our own, but not getting ahead of ourselves. That’s the biggest concern. start buying up properties and planning all these developments and things change and you get yourself in a position where you can be stuck. So it’s really just nice steady slow growth and just kind of being aware of where things are transposing over time.

Scott Bursey (12:52)
And on that note, Josh, what is a major lesson or perspective shift you’ve embraced recently that has fundamentally changed the way you approach market opportunities?

Joshua Munns (13:03)
⁓ I think it’s being aware of what’s happening, you know, really within the market and how things are changing. We really were focused so long ago on what work is in front of us. We chased a lot of public work projects. We chased a lot of ⁓ private projects as well. ⁓ But I think that for us, it’s more important to focus on fun projects and things that we want to build, things that we really want to take on that can be exciting and invigorating to keep the team happy.

You take on some projects that just don’t necessarily fit within your company or your development strategy and you get yourself into a situation where you’re not having as much fun as you should. And really at end of the day, I’m in this because I want to build fun stuff. I want to build cool projects and so that’s really where our focus is at.

Scott Bursey (13:49)
That’s awesome. And what do you have on the horizon? What’s your vision here for the next, oh, five, 10, 15 years?

Joshua Munns (14:37)
Well, right now our vision is big on development and it’s really developing some of our own projects. And so we’re working on a 67,000 square foot pre-manufactured metal building that we’re developing right across the street from our office, which is great. And it’s to help fill the needs of the area because we are limited on supply for the small warehouse space, flex industrial space. We have a lot of vacancies in the large industrial space. We built tons of large industrial centers here, know, a hundred thousand

200,000

square foot facilities, but that doesn’t help the small plumber or the small electrician who needs a warehouse and an office and a fenced yard, you know, that’s 5,000 square feet. And so we see that need in the area. And so we we purchased a piece of land and then developing that project for for that. And we’re going to continue to see what the area needs and how we can best serve our community by providing the, you know, those those developments that are going to be useful to the community. Same thing with a place out in Gardnerville.

We’ve got a piece of property out there that’s slated for four multifamily units and then an 8,000 square foot ⁓ commercial center. And so it’s a mixed use development, but we really need to bring some of that affordable housing to that market. It’s really lacking on that. And they could always use some more commercial space for businesses. So it’s really honing in on where the city is growing, what are the needs of the city, and how can we best serve that with new developments that can really serve the community and serve the businesses.

that want to grow and build here.

Scott Bursey (16:07)
What would you like our audience to know about your business specifically?

Joshua Munns (16:11)
Well, I think for us, ⁓ know, I think I want people to know more than anything is that we enjoy what we do and we have fun doing it. And when you do that, then it’s more fun to build. And so it’s more about, you know, good communication and good interaction with our clients to make sure that they understand that we’re a team together to build this. We’re not just a contractor looking to cash paychecks. We’re here to help build something fun and good for the community. And when you focus on that, then the construction process is

fun and the end product is great when you really focus on what you’re actually building and providing to the community. And that’s what our focus is. The other thing for us is really technology focused and forward thinking. We use a great project management tool called Builder Trend. We love it. It’s a great tool for our clients who can see daily updates and daily pictures. They can see the project schedule. It really brings them into the project because we work with a lot of clients who aren’t necessarily in town. We have a lot of out of town clients who are

building who can’t be on site every day or be involved in the project every day. But if we can share that experience with them and they can see the updates and see the progress and feel like they’re involved regardless where they are in the world, that creates a better relationship with us and our clients. And that’s what we focus on is really bringing technology into construction and forward thinking approaches to the industry to help build better projects and better relationships.

Scott Bursey (17:34)
That is a tremendous focus. That’s an incredibly valuable takeaway. And thank you for being on the show. Before we let you go, if somebody wants to reach out to learn more about your journey, how can they contact you?

Joshua Munns (17:47)
The best way is to find us at schellcreek.com or schellcreek.construction See we have the new URL right it’s not just .coms anymore so now it’s schellcreek.construction which is always kind of fun. So yeah our website is a great place to find us. You can find me on LinkedIn at Joshua Munns I’m out there as well and ⁓ yeah we’re out in the community we’re here in town and we’re building every day.

Scott Bursey (18:09)
Thank you for being on the show.

Joshua Munns (18:11)
Yeah, well thanks, God, having me. really appreciate it. Really enjoyed the talk.

Scott Bursey (18:14)
Absolutely. And thank you to all of our listeners tuning in. If you found value in today’s episode, please make sure that you’re subscribed. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.