In 1993, Royce Cornelison and Skeeter Pritchett started their own construction company out of the basement of Cornelison's Bryant, Alabama, home.
Cornelison was only 33 at the time, but after working at Raines Brothers Construction on industrial and retail projects, he was eager to branch out on his own.
"It was scary the first few years working with borrowed money, but I knew if we did what we said we would and we had a foundation of honesty and integrity, it would pay dividends over the long term, and it has," Cornelison says. ""We're not about getting it done and getting out. We're about bulding lasting relationships."
Over the past 25 years as the company moved from Bryant to Trenton, Georgia, and then to Chattanooga, that approach has helped P&C Construction benefit from frequent repeat business from such diverse customers as Hobby Lobby, SunTrust, Games Workshop, Starbucks, Burke's, Beal's, UTC and the local hospitals.
Pritchett retired and left the business a decade ago, but Cornelison has remained and owns the business with his sons - Nic, a company vice president and incoming chairman this year of the Associated General Contractors of East Tennessee, and Jordan, a project manager for P&C who is a vice president of the Home Builders Association of Chattanooga.
P&C has completed nearly $500 million of projects in 22 states over the past quarter century. The firm has grown to employ about 50 company employees, plus 700 to 900 subcontractor employees at any one time. The company averages about 40 to 60 projects at any time, ranging from retail, to manufacturing to schools and hospitals, to commercial offices, and even a few residential projects.
In 2018, P&C built its biggest project so far - a 40,905-square-foot headquarters in Collegedale for the international media ministry of It Is Written.
"As long as the economy remains strong, we anticipate continuing to grow as a company," Cornelison says.