Telligent Masonry: Brick by Brick

View This Article in BOSS Magazine

Telligent Masonry’s success is set in stone

Going all in with their in-house operations has made Telligent Masonry one of the most sought-after specialty construction firms in the Mid-Atlantic. Founded in Florida in 1957 by the Pappas family, the company has excelled by building a deep bench of skilled craftspeople, a powerhouse estimating group, and by delivering comprehensive pre-construction services. That combination has cemented them as the go-to masonry experts in the region.

While many developers and general contractors are dealing with the limitations of a tight labor market, Telligent has sidestepped those concerns with relative ease. One of the only self-performing companies of its kind, the Rockville, Md., firm never uses outside tradespeople. That approach has attracted an enviable stable of repeat clients as well as the top talent in the industry.

A fair share of the company’s workforce has been with Telligent for decades, cultivating the rich institutional knowledge and superior skills that have won the company dozens of prestigious national and regional awards over the years.

In 2021, Telligent earned the National Excellence in Construction Pyramid Award from the Association of Builders and Contractors for their work on Baltimore’s Liberty Harbor East mixed-use residential complex, adding another honor to a very long list of world class achievements. Recently, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) granted them accreditation as an ABC Quality Contractor and Top Performer, a distinction they’ve earned each year since 2018.

Their portfolio contains high-profile projects for Walt Disney World, Four Seasons Hotels, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, the huge American Airlines concourse at the airline’s hub at Miami International Airport, Walmart, Pike and Rose, Bowie Baysox Stadium, The U.S. Naval Academy, and Andrews Air Force Base, to name a few.

They’ve also worked on rebuilds for popular spots such as the Baltimore and D.C. waterfronts, Navy Yard, and Buzzard Point. The Baltimore project includes 1.1 million square feet of new residences, retail, offices, and parking and 10 acres of public space at Port Covington. The others are revitalizing vast swaths of riverfront in the nation’s capital.

“We're very relationship-based,” said Chris Pappas, the company’s president and CEO. “We concentrate on being really good to our customers.” When seeking new clientele, Telligent focuses on companies that share their safety and quality mindset, and whose business model is compatible with theirs.

“We get involved in projects early on instead of just bidding on work as it comes available,” Pappas explained. The strength of their estimating team enables Telligent to collaborate with owners, owner-builders, or general contractors at the RFP stage of upcoming projects to help them win bids. “It doesn't mean that everything we budget is going to come our way, but being involved early and helping them get the project tends to get us on board as well.”

Their roster of repeat clients often includes project owners that seek their expertise at the idea stage. “All they have is an outline on a napkin or a thought, and they may need some help; they might have some pictures or a floor plan, and we have the ability to actually draw all that up,” he added. Telligent uses 3D modeling to generate those images.

Helping owners and general contractors with their project budgets is another service that differentiates Telligent from other masonry companies. As Pappas put it, “If they can see exactly what we have figured into the budget, they don’t have to add in 15 or 20% for interpretation. They can look at what we have figured out and decide whether or not we're on the same page.” Such detailed advance estimations help to avoid project-killing cost overruns.

The Telligent pre-construction team also aligns project logistics to meet their customers’ needs, sharing schedules and working in concert with the GCs. “We don't tell them how we're going to build a project, we ask them how they are going to build it so then we can form a plan that works with their plan,” Pappas explained. Their leadership in quality has even led GCs to adopt Telligent’s project planning strategy and apply it across other trades.

In addition to their work in brick, concrete block, cast stone, precast, and stone veneers, the company has added air and vapor barrier work to their list of capabilities, and are an Air Barrier Association of America (ABAA) certified. They recently won ABAA’s Air Barrier Excellence Award. Air and vapor barriers keep uncontrolled air or vapor from leaking through the building enclosure.

Air and vapor barrier work is traditionally outside the masonry scope of work but is becoming more common in the industry. “We use air barrier work to enhance our masonry flashing crews,” Pappas said. “We have our flashing crews certified under ABAA to add air barrier work to the flashing we’re already doing,”

Company founder Gus Pappas, Chris’ father, believed that safety was essential for producing high quality work, so it's no surprise that Telligent exceeds safety requirements set by OSHA, as well as by insurance companies, construction partners, and local regulators. For seven consecutive years, Telligent received ABC’s gold-level Safety Training and Evaluation Process Award.

By performing every aspect of their work with their own tradespeople, the company can ensure the consistent safety of their equipment and everyone involved in their piece of a project. Now that’s what we call going all-in.