Chattanooga's EMJ to become $1 billion company this year

A home-grown Chattanooga company expects to become a $1 billion a year company for the first time this year.

EMJ Corp., ranked 101 on Engineering News-Record's top 400 contractors in the United States, is slated to hit $1.2 billion in annual revenues in 2016, up from $875 million last year, says company Chief Executive Jay Jolley.

"Business is great," he says, quipping that there's "life after the recession."

Jolley attributes the success to a new direction the company took in the wake of the Great Recession that has helped drive business to previously unseen heights.

Started in 1968 by Jolley's father, Edgar M. Jolley, EMJ like many firms was hit hard by the steep downturn, prompting leaders to diversify into what is now nine other, though complementary, business segments.

While EMJ over the decades was a company that staked much of its revenue in building for the retail sector and Chattanooga-based shopping center operator CBL & Associates Properties Inc., it now has a family of ventures across the United States with a broad and diversified client list.

They range from EMJ Hospitality, which focuses on projects within that sector, to RedStone Construction, which focuses on doing jobs with Native American parties such as casinos and other projects.

"We diversified within the boundaries of what we do," Jolley says. "They're nine different companies which are complimentary to each other and in some ways serve each other."

Burt Odom, EMJ's president, says every one of the nine businesses is growing.

"Our approach is slow and steady," he says, noting the builder is "in it for the long haul."

Jolley said the company emerged from the recession with the aim that it was not necessary to always be the low bidder for a job, but to bring value to clients.

"It was a good change for us," he says. "It has been received very well by the industry."

The approach is one that EMJ officials term concept to completion, or C2C.

Odom, who was elevated to president in 2010 and works out of the company's Dallas office, says EMJ tries to bring clients and its employees together early and collaborate, even in the conceptual stage, so the most efficient project can be constructed.

"We bring value to the owner early," he says.

Odom says EMJ has started an innovation department which studies what the company could be doing differently. That may involve innovating in the use of technology to determine how builders may be raising structures in other ways, he says.

"We differentiate ourselves," Odom says.

Innovation may include, for example, using drones to fly over building sites to capture topographic information and assist with concepts to reduce site costs for clients.

Odom says drones can help builders obtain data on a weekly or even a daily basis. At the same time, he says, while the company wants to be out front and innovate, that doesn't mean it's the first company trying something.

He uses the idea of what EMJ officials call "servant leadership."

"Everybody should be serving everybody," Odom says. "We all have people we serve in a sphere of influence - it's serving each other and everyone we touch."

EMJ officials believe such a business philosophy helps woo employees and retain them, and they foresee continuing to create new companies in the future.

"We want to solve [client] problems," Odom says. "Long-term, that's where we're going. With that, that's an opportunity for growth."

EMJ's aim is to create three years of backlogged business.

Jolley says EMJ never set out to become a billion-dollar-a-year business, but this year the company will top that mark for the first time and best its previous record year by $300 million in sales.

"We're there doing the right thing," he says. "It's exciting. It's fun."