Building the BuiltRight Headquarters

First step, we needed to buy a property. After looking at a few spots around New Milford, Matt selected this vacant lot positioned nicely between Still River Drive and Lanesville Road. It's right off of Route 7 and technically located on Route 202 - there are a couple natural park areas within walking distance, a gym within sight and a 7/11 a few doors down.

Regarding site work, we needed to clear out trees and brush, dig out and blast the rock hill on the North East side of the property so we could pour footings and the foundation. The site work category is quite broad and captures everything from pre-building clearing and blasting to fencing, paving and curbs.

When it comes to pouring concrete for footings, foundation and the slab that serves as our beautiful shop floor, we did not cut any corners. This process arguably took longer than most others in the project, measure twice, cut once!

The steel building was carefully designed to maximize our buildable space on the property, meaning that while it might look simple, a lot of work went into laying out the structure to fit our specific situation. The building was delivered on 12 tractor trailers and the erection team put it up a lot quicker than we thought they would.

Most sheetrock walls don't end up costing almost as much as a Ford Raptor, but in our case, the 35 foot demising wall that separates our expansion/storage space from the BuiltRight warehouse was right around there. We had this massive wall finished right before installing our pallet racking alongside it, and the expansion space side (second image below) has yet to be finished.

The carpentry, windows, doors, glass garage doors, paint and office framing work really put the finishing touches on the space. We wanted everything to feel as open and welcoming as possible, so we did not skimp on windows and access points. 'Couldn't have it feeling like a cave in here!

Regarding utilities and services, we made sure our electrical switchgear could provide more than enough power for our future plans, and that we could run the essentials in the building on a permanent or mobile generator. The lighting we selected and the sheer number of lights we hung gives us incredible coverage throughout the space.

There are many other items that ended up on the bill of course, whether we're focusing on pallet racking, Big Ass Fans, tables, dumpsters, you get the idea. There are plenty of non-tangibles you don't see on our property now too that incurred various costs, such as our superintendent, designers and project manager, or the security fencing and portable toilets for the tradesmen who built the structure.

There will always be random fees, bonds and charges associated with putting up a new building and doing business in a newly minted location - we were aware of that going into this. That being said, we had the great pleasure of working with New Milford's Town Mayor Pete Bass, who welcomed us into the community with open arms and assisted with the processes of permitting and overall town integration.

Our highest priorities for this building project were that it was managed incredibly well and completed on an aggressive timeline. Because of this we didn't skimp out on a builder or opt for discounted opportunities to save a buck. We were fully aware of the possible financial implications from the start, and we couldn't be happier with our choices. We are thrilled that the awesome folks at Claris Design Build were on board the whole way and made it happen!

We're very thankful for their expertise and assistance with the insane number of decisions that needed to be made. It's a huge investment that's allowing us to finally do business at scale. This project truly defines our first core value, 'Big Ideas, Bold Action' and is our way of saying that BuiltRight Industries is here to stay.

Watch Matt's run-through of the timeline, challenges and resources that went into building this space: