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Building up an industry

Construction: Kent Thomas discusses his work with the nonprofit Building Congress & Exchange Foundation

By Elliott A. Wiley Jr., Special to Baltimoresun.com

April 12, 2004

Kent Thomas is the new president of the Building Congress & Exchange Foundation in Baltimore.

The nonprofit organization develops educational and public-awareness programs for the region's construction industry. Since its inception in 1998, the foundation has awarded $25,000 a year to construction-education programs in the Baltimore area. Thomas will serve a one-year term as president.

BCEF works under the auspices of KAWG&F, a public accounting firm based in Towson. Thomas is co-chairman of the firm's construction services practice group.

A graduate of James Madison University, Thomas is a certified public accountant who has worked for KAWG&F since 1984. He also is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants, Associated Builders and Contractors and Downtown Towson Rotary Club.

What is the Building Congress & Exchange Foundation?

There's two parts: There's an organization, or trade association, part -- which provides training, networking opportunities, and other resources for construction owners for the support of the industry as a whole. Then, there is the charitable foundation part. It promotes the construction industry within the greater Baltimore area, which includes a public awareness campaign on the construction industry, what we are about, and employment opportunities within the industry.

Is there a need for the foundation?

The Building Congress & Exchange Foundation is absolutely needed. Construction is a very vibrant industry. Other than the government, it's the second-largest employer in the United States. If not, it's a very large employer in the United States.

There are lots of opportunities within the construction industry, and we would like to make sure those opportunities are noticed.

How did you get involved with the foundation?

When I got out of college, I had no idea I would be working with construction companies; it just sort of happened that the first client that I worked on was a construction client. I liked it. I enjoyed working within the industry. [Construction workers] tend to be just salt-of-the-earth great people to work with -- good family owned businesses.

I just became an expert within the field -- going and getting the training and learning the tax laws, the accounting things -- and it just developed to where 90 percent of my work was in the construction industry.

It's been very, very good to me; it's been very good for my career, so I sort of wanted to get involved in an organization to give back to a group that has been very, very good to me.

You normally work with clients to help them make money. Now, you are -- in essence -- giving it away. How does your thinking change in a position like this?

You have to wear different hats in any job you do. I still have to focus on client work, tax returns, financial statements -- those sorts of things -- but those same skills do translate over into what we are doing here.

What are those skills, Mr. Thomas?

You need to make sure there are sound financial policies within a charitable organization. Are they accounting for their money properly? We have a bundle of dollars we are looking at, and we need to make sure those are invested soundly.

We need to make sure there are policies and procedures in place for how we give away money. And the same thing with a business, they should have policies and procedures for how they handle their finances.

So, it sort of translates over to make sure that a sound business is a sound business -- and we're no different; we're a business. We're just a business with a charitable purpose, rather than a business that's in the business to make money.

What are your goals for the foundation?

Our major push is to develop a "Planned Giving" campaign, where we're looking to our more seasoned and successful construction owners and to create a methodology where they can contribute to the organization in a long-term manor, either through remembering us in their wills or making estate gifts to us. We would use that within our endowment to develop scholarships and grants of a larger purpose and to just continue to grow our charitable purpose.

As a whole, KAWG&F serves multiple industries. How do you work with the firm to ensure construction needs are met?

We're broken down into segment groups, or niche groups, within our company -- so myself and another one of my other partners, who co-chairs our construction services group. So, we are just in charge of that group, and we are in charge of servicing that industry and my goal is to grow the revenues within our firm through the growth of our construction services group.

There's also a medical-services group that services the medical industry -- doctors and other medical groups and surgical centers and things like that. But, that's not my responsibility, that's somebody else's responsibility. So how I do that is through chairing [the construction] group within [KAWG&F]. They always have been extremely supportive of any marketing endeavors or any sort of giving back to the community, both from a charitable perspective and by giving back to trades that have been good to us. They've always been extremely, extremely supportive of any of those endeavors.

Despite the recent reports on job growth, there still remains a number of people who are unemployed. Why are so many jobs available in construction?

A couple of reasons: The economy is doing fairly well with construction. You see new housing starts are up, and construction in general is up. That's primarily due to the lower interest rates. Therefore, people are building. As such since things are being built, we need workers of all shapes and sizes -- from unskilled labor all the way up the ladder.

The problem that we see is that I don't think people always look to the construction industry as a career. When you graduate from college, you can't go to a four-year degree and get a degree in construction management. You can be an architect, you can be an engineer, you can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor -- but you can't graduate with a construction management degree.

So, we're looking to develop a public awareness that the construction industry's here and we've got opportunities. We're trying to develop an awareness for women in the construction industry. We're administering a grant right now for Maryland so that we can promote the construction industry to women, to have more women come into the work force.

How do you execute this project?

The state of Maryland identified that there was a need -- and they came to us and asked if we would administer the grant. So, we are identifying the organization to handle that, paying the bills, approving budgets. But, it's a public awareness sort of campaign. We have pencils and pens and handouts. We are going to go to schools to hopefully show women that this is an industry that they can be very successful in.

Since 1998, the foundation has donated an average of $25,000 a year. Is this expected to change during your tenure?

With our current endowment, $25,000 a year does not eat into our principal, so we can give away that and more. How we intend to grow that would be through efforts like "Planned Giving" and continued fund-raising opportunities. We hope to continue to grow our endowment so that we can get involved in even larger campaigns or larger public-awareness scholarships, possibly to community colleges, four-year universities.

What other programs are you considering?

Development of possible programs within high schools or organizations that target more high-risk kids for more unskilled positions -- but we need everybody; we need unskilled [workers] all the way up, and we just need to target the organizations that will help us develop those workers.

Given the availability of jobs in the industry, could the money you raise be better served elsewhere?

There is still a need for workers within the construction industry. Somebody who is unskilled and maybe getting by on a minimum-wage job -- if they knew that the construction industry had opportunities for them, they could start as a minimum-wage worker and could work themselves up through the ranks to become extremely successful.

I don't know if that opportunity is available in every profession. But I know that it's available within the construction industry -- and there are a lot of opportunities. Not just opportunities for a low-paying job, but an opportunity to come in and rise up through the ranks and either own your own successful company or be a successful part of management within an existing construction company.

Past board donations have included scholarship funds, schools- and construction-specific programs. Do you plan to finance more construction programs?

The general purpose first has to fall under our umbrella, which is to help promote the construction industry within the greater Baltimore area. But with that being said, we have done other charitable things before: The biggest hurdle we have is we can't dictate to the community college that they need to start the kind of program or they need to hire a professor to do this type of work, of course.

We need to train all of the institutions and universities of the need for these workers -- and if you would help in developing those skills either through a two-year program or a four-year program, that there's a ready pipeline out here. I don't know how long there will be a ready pipeline for doctors or accountants -- are there too many of those types? But we know there is a need for people in our industry, so if they come to us trained, we can put them to work.

Concerns have arisen that there is a void in the number of minority construction workers in the Baltimore area, in part because of few educational opportunities. Does the foundation have a program to promote minority-based programs?

It has not been a target focus that we've done right now, but women within the construction industry are considered minorities. As far as federal minority set-asides, women are considered minorities. We have given to [the Living Classrooms Foundation] and other organizations that I know have targeted high-risk youth within the city. We have supported those types of programs in the past.

We would be more than happy to support efforts to bring more minorities into our industry. It would need to be a part of a long-range goal.

How many grant proposals do you expect to consider this year?

We'll probably see between 20 and 30 grant proposals of all shapes and sizes -- from the universities looking to develop a program, to an individual student looking for help, who is taking classes at a community college or trade school. [The applications] run the gambit from a few hundred to tens of thousands.

How does that number fit within the foundation's goals?

We would love to continue to grow our charitable purpose. Part of what we have done over the past couple years is to work with the community colleges to develop programs so that we can bring more young people into the construction industry.

What is the biggest challenge in your job?

People don't know to send a grant application to the Building & Congress Foundation, so we need to go out and find the people that need money and target them. That's been part of our program over the last number of years is to try and target worthy organizations that need our assistance and we've done that.

How do you approach organizations the foundation is interested in?

One example would be we brought together all of the community colleges about a year ago and told them that we have funds available -- that if they developed a program to assist the construction industry or promote the industry -- we would be happy to make a long-term commitment.

We met with basically every community college within the greater Baltimore area. There were probably a dozen academic organizations there, and we're hoping to get grant applications from each one. Then, we can develop a program within each one of the community colleges. That's just one example. We'd like to continue doing things along those lines.

There are concerns that many minority-owned companies cannot compete with larger firms unless they participate in a joint venture or merge their financial resources because so many dollars are involved. Can the foundation serve for-profit companies?

We have not gone down that road yet. We've given to universities; we've given to other non-profit organizations; we've given to high schools -- but we have not given to for-profit companies. It's a worthwhile idea, but it hasn't been one that we have focused on as of yet. But I see the need. I agree with it.

What do you enjoy most about your new position?

The favorite aspect is that the construction industry has been very good to me. It's helped me move up within this firm, and it's helped me to be a very successful accountant. So the opportunity to give back has been very helpful and worthwhile for me.