Introduction
Josh Dobeck, Manager of Business Development at Turner Construction in Charlotte, North Carolina, joins his friend Jack Ossa on The Power of Design Podcast to talk about design, construction and keeping yourself creative in business. Jack describes him as an experienced construction professional with an incredible work ethic and a commitment to excellence.
Josh has more than 13 years in the industry and covers the Carolinas for Turner, which makes his path from the field to business development a useful look at how contractors win and deliver work.
About the Episode
Asked what skill matters most, Josh names flexibility and understanding your trade, and says early in his career he learned to respect the people who work with their hands. He grew up in Florida and Georgia, started college in a design program with the idea of becoming an architect and found that it was not his skill set. He switched to the construction program, because he liked seeing how buildings go together.
He joined Turner as an intern and worked on a dormitory at a university, a laboratory building, and a high school in Georgia where sinkholes meant filling the ground with thousands of cubic yards of grout. He also ran budgets and coordinated clashes on a hospital project with design assist before moving into business development. Turner is a general contractor headquartered in New York with 43 business units across the United States, and its work includes healthcare, commercial and institutional buildings, industrial projects and labs.
Josh and Jack discuss how to prepare for networking, why speed wins proposals, how contractors and architects can work together, and why creativity is a mindset. They finish with the future of construction: robots on job sites, touch-free systems and sensors, and the way owners choose delivery methods.
Key Takeaways
- Know your trade first: Josh tells younger staff to understand the task at hand and the fundamentals before worrying about the future.
- Respect the trades: trade partners are as integral to the building process as anyone and should have a say in how they work.
- Business development needs project knowledge: contracts, schedules, and market awareness make a seller credible, and clients buy the company the person represents.
- Prepare for every room: research who will attend and decide who you need to meet.
- Respond quickly: Jack notes that time kills deals, and answering proposals fast has won projects.
- Get contractors to the table early: late involvement means managing expectations after the design is sold.
- Protect your creativity: hobbies, curiosity and facilitating creativity in others make people better at solving problems.
Highlights from the Conversation
They're just as integral and part of the building processes as anybody.
Josh Dobeck
Try not to eat the elephant as a whole and take little bites.
Josh Dobeck
I believe everybody is creative.
Jack Ossa
Topics Discussed
- Skills for growing a construction career
- Moving from field engineering to business development
- What a national general contractor like Turner does
- Preparing for networking and building warm connections
- Speed and responsiveness in proposals
- Contractors, architects and budgets
- Design-build, CM at risk and integrated project delivery
- Creativity, robotics and technology on job sites
Why This Conversation Matters
Josh's point that contractors and designers need to be at the table together is the idea behind how we approach architecture and interior architecture: cost, schedule and constructability are part of design from the start. It shows in industrial and office projects such as eFactor 3 and First in Flight, and in institutional work like Melmark Carolinas.
About the Guest
Josh Dobeck is the Manager of Business Development for the Carolinas at Turner Construction, covering North and South Carolina, including Charlotte, Raleigh, Greenville and Charleston. He has more than 13 years in the construction industry, started with Turner as an intern and has worked on educational, laboratory, healthcare and other projects. Outside work he plays and writes music and does leather work. Visit Turner Construction or connect with Josh on LinkedIn.
