A contractor organized around tenant work.
Tallow Creek Construction does one kind of work: commercial fit-out. Retail and office tenants, in Indianapolis and in the other states where those tenants are opening.
Why fit-out is its own discipline
With a fit-out, the building already exists, somebody else owns it, and the rules for working inside it are written into a lease. Nothing about the job starts from a clear site.
The schedule is not set by weather or by a foundation pour either. It is set by a date the tenant has already committed to, and often already advertised. You work backwards from that date, or the project is late before it starts.
So the work is less about putting a building up and more about coordination: the landlord work letter, the base-building systems you are tying into, the trades you cannot have in the same room on the same day, and the inspection that has to pass before a store can take delivery of its fixtures.
Built for more than one location
Multi-site work changes how a contractor has to be put together. A tenant opening in four states does not want four contractors, four sets of details, and four different ways of being told the same news.
They want the build to be repeatable: the same drawings, the same submittal process, the same report arriving on the same day of the week, and one person who knows the status of every location without having to go and find out.
That is how this company is set up. Projects are run from Indianapolis, with one project manager accountable for a tenant's whole program. Subcontractors are hired locally in each market and pre-qualified before they are awarded anything. The trades change from city to city; the process and the point of contact do not.
How we decide what to take on
We turn down work we are not right for. If a project needs a contractor already established in a particular market, or needs a discipline outside fit-out, it is cheaper for everyone to hear that in the first conversation than after a bid.
Projects are run by Mike Carter. Anything on this site that needs an answer, he is the one to ask.