BUILDING A NEW WORLD

International Construction Managers Ltd (ICM) was started by Wendall Marshall as a Construction Management firm for the Caribbean. Mr. Marshall’s first company, ICM Bahamas, was established in 2010 after the president returned from studying and working in the United States. Today, the company spans the region through an additional two companies: ICM Antigua and ICM St. Martin. Furthermore, it has its own construction firm by the name of WM Construction.

ICM’s name is already attached to some of the region’s most notable buildings. It was responsible, for example, for the One West Business Park and the RBC Wealth Management centre, both in Nassau. In Antigua, ICM constructed several government buildings and various custom residential properties. Meanwhile, in St. Martin, it focuses on the demolition and construction of high-end hotels.

Lifting Up Everybody

It’s clear that the company is successful and the ICM name carries a good reputation. It has created this in just 13 years. However, in order to deliver its projects, ICM has had to change how construction works – not only for itself, but for the rest of the region as well. One of the starkest examples of this was the foundation of WM Construction. Mr. Marshall explains why establishing the company was essential and how it’s changed the local landscape:

“We found that in, some places where our projects went ahead, we couldn’t find appropriate local construction companies. We had to actually start a construction company in order to do some of the work that’s very technical, or because there simply wasn’t the staff locally to do it. We’d therefore bring people in from abroad to carry out the work.

“Over time, though, we realised that bringing in foreign workers meant our costs were exorbitant. We were looking at bringing people in from the US or Canada and obviously their rates are higher. Plus you’re paying for housing, transportation, schooling for the kids, and other amenities. It became expensive.

“Instead, we changed tack. We decided to train local people and work with them to try and bring them up to our standards. That means when the project’s over, we leave people there in those communities that are confident and capable to carry on using the skills they’ve learned from us. As a result, we’re helping raise the overall skill level throughout the areas that we work –and when we return, we can rely on them to help us meet our standards.”

ICM’s approach of ‘if it doesn’t exist, create it’ has extended beyond manpower, though. It’s also created the infrastructure for better materials provision across the countries its operating in. ICM St. Martin, for example, created a lumber yard so that it didn’t need to rely on imports.

“We realised owning the materials made life a lot simpler because you don’t have to worry about supply and demand and who comes first and prices going up and down,” explains Mr. Marshall. “Since then ICM has also purchased a ship, so that we can transport a lot of materials we use for ourselves. For instance we get PVC, cement, aggregates, and lumber steel out of Dominican Republic. With the ship, we don’t have to book in transport and wait for the deliveries, we can just organize it to our schedule.”

ICM even created a new sideline for itself in the form of pasta manufacturing.

“We’re going into mini manufacturing,” Mr. Marshall says. “We set up a factory in Grand Bahama where we want to produce pasta. It’s obviously not construction but we realised from doing a lot of exporting to Haiti that food is an issue there. I wanted to want to do something simple that could help. A lot of the time the people there don’t have a lot of electricity, so when they get bread they can’t store it, they have to east it as soon as possible. On the other hand, pasta can be stored for a long time and used in the exact amounts required.

“When our ships go there, they go out empty and then come back with materials. We’re paying the same amount of fuel and manpower to go and get the materials, whether the ships go out empty or loaded so we decided to start doing exports as well. Pasta is the ideal export product for us in that respect, so we’re in the process of creating a plant that will do pasta – but it will also do PVC pipes and metal studs for our construction work as well.”

Creating Efficiency

Materials are the basis of ICM’s work, and ensuring that it’s able to have what it needs, when it needs them, is an ongoing cause for improvement for the company. Its plans for PVC pipes and metal studs will enable it to be much more efficient, but there are plenty of other materials required on every construction project as well.

Mr. Marshall explains how the company does its best to mitigate this through a sensible and sustainable approach:

“What we realised also after doing construction all over the Caribbean and America is that the number one issue was supplies. We’ve got partners in the US, warehouses where we get electrical supplies, plumbing supplies, finishing supplies like tiles and drywall, and lots of items like that. We get all of our main supplies from the US and Canada.

“There are a lot of suppliers based in the Caribbean but their prices are triple because by the time they’ve imported the items and paid for the shipping, storage, overheads and then added profit and delivery, the prices rocket upwards. Therefore we only use suppliers here for things we need on the spot. Not a lot is actually made in the Bahamas, we have to import so much, so we always try to plan ahead and order sufficient materials ahead of time so we don’t find ourselves in a predicament affecting our schedule and outcomes to our projects.

“One example of that is a project we’re executing with Carnival, the cruise company. They own an island where the cruise ship goes and docks, then people get off and people can stay there. The island has structures that are very challenging, even though we do a lot of island projects. The issue with something like that is materials and workers. What we realised with working on islands is that you don’t have access to local deliveries or suppliers at all.

“In those situations we always try to order more than we need and build a mini warehouse on the island for simple things like screws and nails. Those sorts of items are important but if you run out of them, it’s a disaster. You have to get on a boat, drive for an hour across land, drive for another hour to the airport, fly, touchdown, drive. You’re talking hours. It’s not sustainable. So we built our own warehouse and imported from the larger islands to the island where the Carnival project is being built.”

Withstanding The Storm

The Caribbean climate, while on the face of it a welcoming one with its sun and blue skies, also harbors significant challenges for the construction industry. In particular, the region is prone to hurricanes, some of which reach the highest category for strength. While the construction industry has traditionally favoured concrete and steel for buildings, Mr. Marshall explains how ICM is pioneering new methods:

“Since I’ve been back in the Bahamas, ICM has bought machines that mean we can produce metal studs. The advantage of metal studs is it allows us to build quicker, it allows us to be more efficient, and they are much more resilient as a base for buildings. Stud don’t burn and they’re flexible. Normally in a hurricane, if you have a Category 5, the hurricane will take off your roof and blow your windows and you’re left with nothing. If a house is made from hard concrete block, wherever there’s a crack or shear in the exterior facing, the whole building goes.

“With studs though, we can design them to be more resilient. They go through computer modelling for hurricanes. The simulation tests the buildings in hurricanes from Category 1 to Category 5. Then, in each one of those, wherever there are failures, the computer will recommend putting in more studs and where to put them for greater flexibility. That way, when the hurricane comes, it allows the building to move and flex with the wind and therefore better survive the storm.”

ICM is considering how this capability can help poorer communities. Much like its plans to export pasta to Haiti, the company wants to bring its metal stud building to other countries that will benefit not only from the better weather resilience but the cheaper building offered by metal studs.

“When we use that system, we accompany it with something called DensGlass,” Mr. Marshall explains. “That is fibreglass boards that can be applied externally to buildings and is designed to be very resilient against weather. It also allows us to finish it in any way we like, so that it can look like a concrete building if you don’t know what’s on the inside. However, it has many advantages over concrete. It’s more resilient and stable, its more affordable, and its quicker to erect.

“In countries like Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, where they don’t have the same resources and a majority of people are poor, this cheaper, quicker building could be a godsend. Whatever we can do to allow them build houses in smaller places, more quickly, and more sustainably, we will pursue. That will help not only those communities but people everywhere in the Caribbean.”

Sports Aid

Alongside its work, ICM is also committed to charitable work in the community. At the moment, it is funding the Blazer Elite Sports Academy, which aims to course-correct the lives of young men in the Bahamas.

“It’s for the young men with just one or even no parents, and aims to keep them away from a life of crime,” explains Mr. Mar- shall. “We bring them to Grand Bahama to the academy and give them the opportunity to play sports such as basketball and soccer. We also provide an education for ages seven to nine and then nine to 12. We provide housing, food, drink, everything they need for a minimal fee. Maybe some of them even go to college afterwards.

“The boys don’t necessarily make it to the pros, but that’s not our goal. Our goal is to give them an education so they can go back home and pursue a fulfilling career in life. Some of them, however, are very bright and stay. Right now we have 20 guys in the academy that we are housing, feeding, and teaching basketball. Over the last couple of the year, we’ve had a total of 250 guys come through the system and all of them have turned out pretty well.”

Building For The Future

Of course, with so much going on, ICM’s future is bright and busy. It’s currently planning to build a world-first mega-yacht free port that will house 120ft yachts during hurricanes. It’s also planning a new ‘fast ferry’ project that will carry passengers from Freeport in the Bahamas to Palm Beach in Florida. This is a much called-for project as many Bahamians have strong family and friendship ties to Florida – and many also go to the US for shopping. “We’re actually in negotiation with some people to buy property at both ends already, and are conducting the research and planning to make this dream a reality,” Mr. Marshall explains.

The President and founder ends on a thoughtful note on the future for ICM and the Caribbean more widely:

“What we’re doing with pushing forwards building techniques, skilling up local communities, and creating better infrastructure for the regional construction industry is essential for the near future. We don’t know what’s coming in ten years, we need to be prepared. So we’re trying to get ahead of the waves to benefit not just us but all of the Bahamas and Caribbean.” c