From Sawhorses at Seven to Senior Superintendent: One Builder's Journey

The WSCCE Interview: Alex Grage, Exxel Pacific, Inc.

With decades of construction management experience under his belt, Alex Grage of Exxel Pacific reflects on how the industry has changed, how to spark interest in construction careers, and how career paths aren’t always straight lines. In our conversation, he shares more on his role, why mentorship matters, and the future of construction education.

Washington State Construction Center of Excellence (WSCCE): As a senior superintendent, what do you do? What does an average day look like? What does a not-average day look like?

Alex Grage, Exxel Pacific: The role can vary depending on the economy and the market. Right now, it is slower than in previous years. So, I’m on a site and I'm running that individual project, and I'm assisting when called on for pre-construction and estimates.

During these periods, the market is more competitive, margins are tighter, and our pre-construction team is looking for any advantages we can use to stay competitive. The field teams are more engaged to ensure our estimates are lean but realistic.

During busier times, I would typically manage multiple projects with a couple of Superintendents on those projects full-time. I would still be engaged with pre-construction, but it's a little bit less intense. Owners aren't repricing projects 3 and 4 times, looking at every option to value-engineer, get creative, and reduce costs to make a job pencil.

One of my favorite things about construction is that there aren’t many average days. There are days when things go as planned, and days when things don't go as planned. People might think, a day that doesn't go as planned is a bad day, but that's not necessarily true.

Many of the most rewarding experiences for me in construction were days that didn’t go to plan. We rallied the team and gathered the key subcontractors on site around an unforeseen event. We came up with a plan, and we moved forward to overcome an unexpected, massive challenge. There are some amazing opportunities when the day doesn't go as you expected. But a day that goes to plan is our preference, don’t get me wrong.

My day starts with a team huddle. Then I go through my emails quickly to make sure I don't have any 911 emails that came in overnight. From there, I review my meeting agenda for the day, and I lock in the time I need to be prepared for those meetings. Then I fill the rest of the day with my to-do tasks. That may be job site walks, that could be pre-construction for a future project, schedule updates, looking at submittals, or procurement logs to be sure the Project Management and Project Engineering teams are staying ahead of what is coming.

I try to do quite a bit of mentoring, as much as I can fit into my schedule. So, there's often some mentor/mentee meetings, and sometimes opportunities arise to work with educators or students at local school programs.

That’s the daily nuts and bolts of what I have going on right now as a Senior Superintendent.

WSCCE: What was the thing that first sparked your interest in construction? Was there a moment or experience earlier in your life that made you think, wow, this is what I want to do, this is a path for me.

Alex Grage: My father was in construction, a carpenter who moved his way up to be a Project Manager for a well-known Seattle-based construction company in the 80s. We had 5 acres out in Redmond, and there was always a construction project of some kind going on. We were digging a pond or building a barn–there was always something.

When I was 6 or 7, I showed up for the weekend, and there was a pile of tools sitting there. It was a circular saw, a drill motor, and a belt sander, and we built some sawhorses that he needed. He was good at engaging in activities while I was growing up. That started me building things.

A couple of years later was the moment when I thought, I think this is really for me. I showed up at his place for the weekend, and he said, “We're going to be on a job site this weekend. We need to go to bed early and wake up early. We will be there both days.” That was untypical. I toured plenty of his job sites, but he didn't make me sit through the grind. It was fun when we went to job sites. I was never made to sit in the truck because he had “work to do.” So, I knew this was important. We got up at the crack of dawn, we packed lunches, and we headed to the job site.

We were excavating next to a building. In hindsight, there was probably some waterproofing failure below grade that had to be repaired. Tenants were back on Monday. Everything had to be back to normal, landscaping in place, as if we were never there. All the soil we exported had to be trucked off-site. My dad gave me clear instructions: “Every time a truck pulls in, it's going to get loaded up with dirt. After it pulls out, you need to pick up all the rocks and sweep up any dirt that drops on the ground, so it doesn’t end up out on the street. If it ends up in the street, we get in big trouble.” Got it.

That was my job. I stood there, ready to go, watching like a hawk. In between trucks, I was probably drifting between throwing rocks, not paying attention, and daydreaming. He was no doubt watching to make sure I didn’t get run over.

On Sunday, the owner of the company came by to make sure everything was getting done. He said to me, “You're working really hard, how much is he paying you?” I looked at my dad, and he probably made some comment about how “He should be paying me for this kind of life experience.” The owner said, “Well, that doesn't seem very fair.,” The conversation moved on to the tasks at hand, and I didn’t think much more about it.
The next weekend at my dad's, there was an envelope sitting on my pillow. It was from the construction company with an official letterhead, and had my name printed on it. I opened it up, and there was a payroll check with my name on it. I was paid minimum wage for both days I worked. Minimum wage at that time was $2.30 in Seattle, so it would’ve been a check for about 40 bucks. Today, that's $120, and for an 8-year-old kid, I couldn't believe it. I thought, “This is awesome!” That’s when I realized, “You can make money in construction, there’s not just big yellow equipment and cool stuff happening, you actually get paid to do this.”

WSCCE: What roles did you hold before your current job, and how did they prepare you for what you do now?

Alex Grage: I started as a laborer in the 90s, two weeks after I graduated high school. Within a few months, I enrolled in a carpentry apprenticeship program. The company I worked for had a program, and after a year of employment, they would cover your costs for the Carpentry Apprenticeship Program at CITC in Bellevue. It was a well-structured program that's still going on today. I saw what the carpenters were doing, my dad was a carpenter, and I did not want to wait. I decided to pay for the first year myself and get a jump on things.

After working through that apprenticeship, I was still young, and I wanted to go off and do my own thing. My father and I had done a road trip through the Southwest, so I loaded up an old Bronco with my dog Pelo, a knack box full of tools, a backpack full of clothes, and lit out for Colorado. I ended up framing houses and becoming a small framing contractor there for a couple of years.

In the late 90s, my grandmother needed regular care, dementia had set in, and my dad was now on a ranch in northeastern Oregon. The decision was made to move her to the ranch. After a phone call with my dad, I packed up and moved to Northeastern Oregon. I built a home for her on the property. That was my first time completing a project from drawings and permitting all the way through the finishes myself. I was involved with every task of the construction of that home. Which was my dad's goal. If you want to know what it takes to be an architect, draft up your own set of drawings and then build a house from them. How good is your framing? Go hang drywall after framing a house yourself. Can you tape drywall? Finish the walls with no texture and paint them yourself. You figure out how to take responsibility quickly when there’s only you on the crew.

We lived on a gorgeous group of properties that totaled 1,500 acres, but my driveway was 3/4 of a mile long, and we were 45 minutes from the town. For me, in my 20s, it was too remote. I couldn’t do it long term, and I was going nuts. I ended up moving back to Seattle and started as an Assistant Superintendent with a General Contractor on a multifamily project in 2000.

During and shortly after 2008, when things slowed down, I worked as a metal fabricator at my friend’s Porsche restoration shop. Vintage Porsches are one of my passions, so I enjoyed bringing those old cars back to life. I also took courses at the Art Institute of Seattle for Industrial Design. Later, my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, so I dropped out of school, and focused full-time on spending time with her.

When things picked back up, I shifted back into a construction management position. Which is still my primary task today, managing multifamily projects in Seattle. That's my history.

How did all that prepare me for what I do now? There's the hands-on construction experience aspect of it, but as a Superintendent for a General Contractor, you do a little bit of everything. It's a diverse position, which is one of the things I like about it.

You might be a laborer one day and then a lawyer the next. Debating contract language with a subcontractor. Wednesday rolls around, and you're a drill sergeant trying to get everybody out of their bunks and motivated to get through the middle of the week. Then it’s Thursday, and you're put to task, having to connect with a team member on a personal level to help them get through a life challenge. And on Friday, you're the captain of Cheer Squad, getting everybody rallied to close out the week strong.

The longer I manage projects, the more I realize it’s not just the construction knowledge or technical understanding. Everything I've accomplished outside of my construction career has also made me into a better Superintendent and a stronger leader. At the same time, my success in construction gives me the confidence and drive to be a better person at home. To be a better partner and a positive role model for my daughters.

It's really a kind of a holistic, full-circle thing. I bring who I am outside of the Trades into the Trades, and all the benefits I get from my career positively impacts who I am off the job.

WSCCE: What do you think is missing in construction education? When you see new people come onto the job site, what do you wish they already knew when they walk in that first day or first week?

Alex Grage: More students and more educators are what we need to work towards. To accomplish that, we need to increase awareness of the benefits of a career in the Trades. We need more people who are sharing their stories of success in the Trades, sharing what a great career this can be. We got away from that, in my mind. I think everybody wanted their child to be the next Bill Gates or maybe Alexander Fleming, who stumbled across penicillin. Those are lofty goals; they're fantastic goals. Those people changed the world. But the level of failure on those career paths is huge. That’s like saying your career is going to be winning the lottery. It’s a fantastic career, but only if you end up with the winning ticket.

We need to switch gears and start highlighting, again, what an incredible career the Trades can provide. It's a guarantee that you’re going to get back what you put into a Trade career. If you put effort in, you will get positive results out. Somewhere along the line, it became cool to get something for nothing. I think that's a massive thing too. Getting more people to talk about the rewards of a hard day’s work in a positive light again.

If I could talk to every high school in this country, I’m convinced we'd have kids beating down the doors to come to work in the Trades. This has been such a positive and life-changing career for me that it’s an easy sell for anyone willing to listen.

I've been extremely impressed with the programs I've been involved with recently, and the quality of education available. The DACUM process I participated in with WSCCE was amazing.  The end results were professional and clean, bringing a level of professionalism to the non-four-year side of construction that we don’t always get. I think we need more of that. If we want to convince parents outside of the Trades that this is a viable career path for their kids, it needs to look as polished as the other options out there.

I'm also an advisory board member for Bellevue's CTE program, and I try to spend time with the carpentry class students when it works with the class’s schedule. I'm really impressed with some of the curriculum, the instructor’s commitment to the program, and the quality of tooling they have.

There are lots of things we're really doing well – the need for more Tradespeople has forced us to be more open and inclusive when recruiting, and I'm happy that we've decided to modernize in that way. I'm also happy about the changes a focus on safety has brought to the culture of construction, working smarter, not harder, finding people's individual strengths, and not breaking yourself or risking life and limb to get the job done.

When I started my career in construction, there was a narrow category of people they were looking for. And after that, there was a hazing process. It was rough. I talked to my dad after my first week and said, “I don't think I can do this.” It was this good old boys club, and they beat you down from the minute you showed up. You got the worst task they could think of for days on end; they wanted to see if you could cut it. That was the system.

I think we see the problem with that system now. Yes, you want to weed out the people whose heart isn't in it. But we were turning away an amazing amount of talent and people who could really bring something to the industry, and here we are. We can't find people to fill roles because we were a bunch of jerks! Those of us who were dedicated to the Trades made it hard to get in because we were protective of the community we had built. But we went overboard. I’m happy to see that culture change, and I’m happy to have an opportunity to do better with the youth in our industry before retiring.

Similarly, there is a culture of sharing information, growth, self-improvement, and asking questions in construction now. “There are no stupid questions” is more than a slogan on a poster in the jobsite trailer. This is a major change.

Everyone having the authority to stop working over safety concerns is another positive shift we’ve made that cannot be understated.

It has been nice to see the people who do come into the Trades comfortably asking questions, comfortable saying, “Hey, this seems sketchy to me.,” or “This is unsafe." I think we're doing an excellent job with that. I got a bit off track from your question, but I didn’t want to talk about the things we can do better without mentioning all the positive changes I’ve seen in the industry over my career.

WSCCE: What are the best ways to generate interest in construction among young people and students?

Alex Grage: The first question every high school-age person asks me is, ‘How much do you make? My dad/mom makes X.’ Caught me off guard the first time. Kids these days… But it’s a valid question. Having a career does not guarantee a comfortable life anymore.

So, I have found creative ways to allude to the earning potential in construction through comparisons to other career choices. For example, a close friend of mine has a graduate degree from UW and a director position in a local hospital with national recognition, and I make around 20% more than they do when you factor in my added benefits of an annual bonus and a company truck. That’s incredible. Not only is that a sizable difference in our current salaries, but for six years, while they were paying to attend college, I was earning money. Then there are the years of student loan payments.

I recently spoke with Seattle Central College’s PACT class. Students seem energized by talking with someone in the Trades who genuinely enjoys their career and who enthusiastically recommends it as a career path. So again, if you are in the Trades and you love what you do, go out there and talk to our community’s youth about your experiences in this industry!

WSCCE: Anything else you'd like to share about the industry, your role, or the future of construction?

Alex Grage: For anyone who isn't afraid of challenging work, who’s ready to focus and give 100% and commit to a career path, there is a home for you in the Trades. If that's your personality type, and you're worried you're not going to fit in, or you think you're not what we're looking for in the Trades, I can tell you, you're wrong. We’ve got a spot for you right over here.

My story is more typical of people in the past who have entered the Trades, but you don't need a father who was a carpenter. You didn’t have to build a set of sawhorses when you were 7 years old. You don't even have to start right after high school. There are so many opportunities in this industry for so many kinds of people. If you are interested in a Trades career, more than likely, there is a position you will find not only personally rewarding, but that offers a livable salary with benefits.

As far as the future is concerned, the demand for work isn't going anywhere. The economy will ebb and flow, but the demand for skilled Trade workers isn’t going away. With that demand comes opportunities for a motivated individual’s success. For a couple of generations, we turned our backs on the idea that this is a strong career choice. It is easy to be drawn towards innovative technologies and the opportunities they bring. But we still need skilled Trades to provide the infrastructure to support those new technologies. Someone needs to build housing for the employees of every new tech company. And someone needs to maintain the vehicles they drive. Those positions are out there, and they pay well.

It’s been a number of weeks now, but when the jackpot hit $1.8B I bought some Powerball tickets. After spending $20 I would never see again, I was thinking about what I would do if I won. That’s when it occurred to me that I would be doing what I do now even if I won a multimillion-dollar lottery. I may be managing construction projects for myself, but there will never be a circumstance which I am not involved in a construction project so long as I am physically and mentally able. Any career you find rewarding enough that you would do it even if you weren’t getting paid is one heck of a career if you ask me.