Megen Construction Company

Celebrating 15 years of exceptional growth

One of the leading construction management firms in the state, Cincinnati-based Megen Construction Co. is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Its founding was a hopeful one, occurring just the week before founder Evans Nwankwo married his wife and fellow engineer, Cathy. Nwankwo created the name Megen by combining his mother’s name, “Meg,” followed by his own initials “EN.”
The tribute to his mother is a vital one. Evans Nwankwo was born in a small village in Nigeria and raised along with 12 siblings by a mother who was widowed when he was 9. He was educated in a British-styled school system that required him to declare a course of study before his early teen years. He loved science, but hated the sight of blood, so he turned to engineering as a way of putting his interest in the physical world to best use. After coming to this country at age 19, he earned a degree in construction engineering at Texas A&M, and became an estimating and contract supervision professional for Turner Construction.
He earned a Certified Professional Estimator degree (one of the only a few holders of such in the Cincy area) as well as becoming an American citizen. After spending 12 years climbing the corporate ladder at Turner, Nwankwo decided it was time to fulfill his lifelong entrepreneurial ambitions and go out on his own.
Entrepreneur at work
Megen Construction was founded in a basement office at home with a $1,617 investment, as undercapitalized as many other fledgling firms, and booking $350,000 that first year. Nwankwo quickly found that his $100,000 bonding capacity made it difficult for him to compete in low-bid public projects that solicited minority participation, so he began to concentrate instead on competing for private commercial projects.
An initial project for Humana of only $42,000 was so successful that the firm awarded him a $1.3 million building renovation. Other small-scale private jobs followed, and the fledgling company began to grow. In the company’s third year, Cathy was able to resign from her position with Turner Construction and come aboard in pre-construction services, and five other professionals were also hired as the small-scale jobs got bigger
“We started small and grew,” says Nwankwo. “We did it systematically and methodically,
allowing us to concentrate on what is most important: focusing on the client. It also allowed us to bring in just the right personnel.” To him, this means not only finding talented professionals, but also deliberately passing on the firm’s core values, so that the entire staff stands behind the firm’s mission and contributes to its success.
The first year, Nwankwo hoped to reach five years; in his fifth, his goal was to reach the tenth year. Now, the count is standing at 15, and the future seems limitless. Indeed, Cincinnati’s Business Courier in 2006 named Megen one of the area’s top 10 fastest
growing enterprises.

Megen today
The staff at Megen now numbers 55, with plans to grow the firm to about 80 to 100. “We take advantage of the fact that we are small enough to bring our personal attention to a project, and big enough to bring a sizeable punch,” Nwankwo says. “I love our size now. How to grow bigger, while maintaining our culture, is our biggest challenge. We figure that when we grow to between 80 and 100, we will be at our peak.”
The firm has proven itself by building some of the area’s most visible and iconic structures, including the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Great American Ball Park, the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and the Fountain Square revitalization.
“Now that our company is a fairly large size, it is difficult for me as a leader to touch everyone,” he adds. “I try to counteract this by making sure my executives get in touch with everyone constantly, so the cultural pipeline remains constant. Our current growth strategy is to have an executive team and to give each executive a segment to manage: education, government, healthcare. Each division then becomes another mini-Megen within Megen proper.”
One way the company reinforces its overall corporate culture is through Megen University, which also provides continuing education and training in the technical aspects of construction. “We share examples of experiences we’ve had on different projects, and how we handled a situation,” says Nwankwo.
Today, the firm has surpassed $50 million in revenues managed , with a bonding capacity of over $30 million, and has grown to include a Cleveland office as well. “We continue to change in order to both respond to the needs of our customers and to continue growing the business,” says Nwankwo. A business that looks like it will continue thriving well into the future. BXM

Meeting every challenge

At Megen Construction, each project
sets its own unique goals

According to Megen Construction Company founder Evans Nwankwo: “We try not to be all things to all people, nor do we take a cookie-cutter approach to every project.” Instead, Megen’s project managers focus on meeting the unique demands of each job and fulfilling the needs of each client. Here are four examples:

Fountain Square Renovation: Managing the $42 million overhaul of the downtown Cincinnati outdoor public plaza and its four-level underground parking garage brought many challenges. Being a public work meant working with not just one owner, but a multitude of stakeholders, as well as dealing with intense public scrutiny and high expectations. Work was exposed to the elements from start to finish. Being located in the heart of downtown Cincinnati meant site logistics had to allow for safe public ingress and egress, as well as the arrival and storage of construction materials. Today, the new Fountain Square has inspired $88 million in surrounding property investment and stands as an example of Megen’s expertise.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: As construction manager on the $110 million project, the firm had to solicit and then manage a diverse range of participants, so the work had to be packaged correctly and strategically to allow smaller companies to bid without sacrificing quality and raising costs. Surrounded by streets, work had to be completed in a constant stream of traffic and limited staging areas. The curvilinear building design required creation of a transfer girder system to evenly distribute its weight across the supporting parking garage’s grid-pattern columns. Timing also necessitated critical concrete pours in the middle of winter. Once again, Megen Construction took these challenges in stride and delivered an award-winning structure.

The Salvation Army Booth Residence: This renovation of 150 senior living units was accomplished while the occupants were in residence. Each three-room apartment was refurbished over a two-day period while its householders were fed and entertained in a lobby room, returning to sleep in their own beds each night. “It was our version of the TV show ‘While You Were Out,’ but they didn’t leave the building,” says Nwankwo. “To get the work done quickly, the planning took twice as long as usual to execute, with everything cut and measured and prepared in advance. Everything had to happen in exactly the right sequence, because if we missed anything, it would screw it all up, so we were very careful, and got in and out to give the residents their space back.”

Fernald Preserve Visitors Center: Megen Construction, working with glaserworks Architecture, turned a pre-engineered steel building on a former Superfund cleanup site into the first Platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Certified building in Ohio. The $3 million building is a model of energy efficiency and environmental building practices. “We’re so proud to have earned the first Platinum LEED certification in Ohio as well as for the Department of Energy’s Legacy Management,” says Nwankwo. “It took tremendous planning and attention to detail to achieve, and the project team truly went beyond the call of duty.”
This same care and consideration has been evident on other Megen projects:
Civic:
Great American Ballpark, in partnership with Parsons Brinckerhoff
Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and
Team Store
Cincinnati Reds Batters Eye
Urban League of Greater Cincinnati
West Carrollton YMCA
Carl H. Lindner YMCA

Government:
Hamilton Co. General Health
District offices
Hamilton Co. juvenile court renovation
Liberty Township maintenance
building and fire station
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Healthcare:
Veterans Affairs Medical Center– Dayton, Cincinnati and Cleveland
Ethicon Endo Surgery
Hamilton County Tuberculosis Control Center and Dept. of Human Services
,
Education:
Trotwood-Madison School District– new high school, new early learning
center, 2 new elementary schools and new middle school
Miami Valley Career Technology Center Student Activity Center
Princeton City School District–
Evendale Elementary, Springdale Elementary and Woodlawn Elementary
Georgetown Exempted Village School District–new elementary school and
junior/senior high school renovation
Mars Hill Academy

Other:
BrewWorks renovation
John Mellencamp Estate
Isiah Thomas Estate
Crossroads Community Church

Delivering encore
construction experiences

Megen Construction has a number of core values,
but they are easily summarized in the phrase above.

According to Megen president and CEO Evans Nwankwo, the client is at the center of his company. “We try to do our best work for our clients, recognizing that each client is unique, and we need to understand their world,” he says. “It is never one-size-fits-all, so we are wired to be flexible and to accommodate changes. We know that clients often can’t visualize the finished product on paper, so when they see the building actually beginning to take shape, they often wish to make a few changes, and we are always willing to be accommodating. This is how we get repeat business, in keeping with our motto, ‘Delivering Encore Construction Experiences.’
“We used to have a long mission statement, full of all of the things we are, but we couldn’t even remember it, much less work to live by it,” Nwankwo adds. “We needed one we could live by, feel, taste and smell. So after a long philosophical discussion, we decided that ‘Delivering Encore Construction Experiences’ encompasses all of our core values: passion, excellence, integrity, safety, a client focus and a sense of pride in our accomplishments.”
All of it starts from the top down, spreading out to encompass not just clients, but also subcontractors, both of which Megen considers an extension of its own work family. “We make decisions based on what is right to do,” says Nwankwo about his business philosophy. “I am proud of my association with both my clients and with my subs.”
Each of the firm’s individual core values, of course, is vital to the firm’s operation as well as its public face. Safety, for instance, is critical to both the workforce on the job and everyone who comes in contact with the project.
For example, Megen recently completed a total renovation of Macy’s Cincinnati headquarters, which remained occupied during the two-year project. As each floor was completed, regular business activity continued on all the floors above and below, necessitating additional protections to keep office workers safe.
Additionally, Megen is very active in school construction and renovation, where the safety of students is always paramount.

Part of it all
Megen Construction, as an MBE, is a part of the minority business community, and it understands how to work with and employ the various abilities and strengths of all of its allied firms and business partners. From the start, Nwankwo’s dream was to build a company where each person could contribute his or her skills and expertise, regardless of race or gender.
In addition, Megan also seeks out diversity in its personnel in other areas, such as background and experience, academic stance and opinion.
While the company has built a large and visible part of Cincinnati, it doesn’t let its involvement end there. Being an active corporate citizen is very important to Megen. Nwankwo is a member of several boards, including the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Bridges for a Just Community and the Fine Arts Fund. The firm’s philanthropies include the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Also important to Nwankwo is his faith, and his firm helped build Crossroads Community Church, his church.
Another important industry initiative that Nwankwo serves is the Spirit of Construction, a Cincinnati effort geared at recognizing and celebrating the construction industry and its contributions to the well-being of the Greater Cincinnati region.
Megen also helped create the Engaging Youth in Engineering and Science (E.Y.E.S.) Program, in order to expose African-American high school students to careers in design, engineering and construction and give them hands-on industry experience. His firm is also proud of the role it plays in reclaiming the city’s neighborhoods, such as Cincinnati’s West End, “one building and one street at a time.” Construction becomes an essential part of the area’s economic development, through Megen’s work with the Community Revitalization Agency.
Winning touch
Megen has won the Associated General Contractors of America 2005 Aon Build America Award for its work on the Freedom Center, an experience Nwankwo compares to winning an Oscar. It was named 2004 Midwest Region Construction Firm of the Year by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency, 2006 Business of the Year by the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce, and 2007 Minority Business of the Year by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. Nwankwo himself is a member of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber board of directors, the City of Cincinnati Building Development and Permit Center Advisory Committee and the Hamilton County Economic Development Task Force.
Nwankwo and his wife Cathy are also the founders of the NuWay Foundation, which seeks to transform the lives and economic conditions of the less fortunate through education, community building and economic development. It has benefited Evans’ home village, Awa, with fresh water installations, medical aid to the local clinic, school supplies and funding five additional schoolteachers.
Because Nwankwo works with his wife and a brother, the business has its familial aspects, and work and home life support each other, as they do for the entire staff of this fast-growing construction firm. He and Cathy have three children, and this helps Nwankwo to position his overall approach to life at day’s end: “Life is balanced,” he says. “Life is good.” BXM