George Uschold

Relentless Ally

Multifamily Master

Over his more than 35 years as a construction professional, Vice President of Operations George Uschold has honed his business sense and project experience to build critical housing in our communities. For multifamily housing clients in the Southeast, George has assembled and mentored fellow project leaders who share his and Balfour Beatty’s client-centered ethos and serve as strategic, value-aligned partners. Backed by a longstanding record of excellence with major repeat clients, we deliver the depth of service, speed to market and design solutions that ensure success.

The Right Teams for the Right Projects

In his years as a project leader, George has created lasting relationships with key clients, positioning Balfour Beatty as a market leader in Type 5 (i.e., wood-frame) construction. By combining our national-scale network of experts and success in diverse construction sectors, George and Balfour Beatty equip our local teams and trade partners to create successful project outcomes.

“We prioritize value alignment with our multifamily clients, and work hard to understand and internalize their objectives as a crucial jumping-off point,” George says. “From there, we place the right people with the right jobs, providing industry experience and local knowledge our clients can depend on.”

George points to Operations Director Nick Wegener and repeat client The Beach Company as prime examples of our intentional and lasting relationship building. Nick first served as a project manager on The Beach Company’s first Balfour Beatty project, The Boulevard on Coleman in Mount Pleasant South Carolina, completed in 2013. At the time, Nick already brought nearly a decade of industry experience and local trade partner networking to the job.  Nick and the Balfour Beatty team built a strong relationship with the Beach Company and its chief operating officer Dan Doyle through their roles as trusted advisors and Relentless Allies. 

In the decade since, Balfour Beatty has repeatedly proven its partnership with The Beach Company in 11 successful and complete projects and three currently ongoing projects. George brings the right clients and project leaders together initially, but the subsequent fruitful relationship proves the power of Balfour Beatty cultivating that relationship over time. Across so many projects, George, Nick, Project Executive Paul Kelley, Senior Project Manager Andrew Brown and others on our team have seized the opportunity to become our client’s best advocate in the Southeast multifamily construction market.

“Whatever the client needs for a successful project, we can roll up our sleeves and rise to the challenge,” George adds. “We collaborate tirelessly, working through and navigating projects together in a process that has been incredibly rewarding for our client and for Balfour Beatty.”

Balfour Beatty’s multifamily clients also highly value our robust Zero Harm ethic, a key differentiator and reflection of our intentional focus of building safe projects for all. Our safety processes are tried and tested, and laser-focused on protecting our people, our trade partners and the communities where we live, work and play.

“We’re continuously pushing the envelope to execute our work as safely as possible, and in a way that smaller multifamily and residential contractors simply can’t match,” George says. “By bringing safety professionals on-site and building value-aligned relationships with our diverse trade partners, we drive the partnerships and personal connections that compel our teams to care. We all want to keep each other safe.”

Smart Schedules

Multifamily housing developers depend on favorable financial climates to generate optimal profits, and thus depend on Balfour Beatty and the enhanced collaboration through which we accelerate project schedules. Through solutions like preconstruction alignment, phased delivery, careful market monitoring and proactive procurement, we ensure our client’s projects are prepared at every step from design to tenant move-in.

Type 5 multifamily construction, typically limited to three or four stories, provides the perfect balance of repeatability and a naturally phased approach. Apartment complexes and townhomes, for example, are often divided into buildings or blocks of units, so George and his project teams can work with clients to deliver complete blocks in phases that accelerate profitability, enable greater quality control and minimize impact on newly moved-in tenants.

“The beauty of phased delivery is that it sets every stakeholder up for success,” George says. “Our clients can begin renting units earlier, their tenants can find housing earlier, and it gives our teams a clear path of steady progress, turning over unit by unit.”

Our teams map this pathway to success by getting involved as early as possible. A development’s site plan, including ingress and egress points, utility tie-ins, tenant amenities and more can all affect an ideal phased approach, so we bring our multifamily expertise and client relationships to bear and provide the best solutions.

Trusted Advisors

Multifamily housing developments also favor accelerated schedules due to ongoing volatility in materials and labor prices. With our depth of industry knowledge in leaders like George, we leverage our early planning and design involvement into circumspect schedule and design considerations to help our clients maximize the value of every dollar.

Multifamily housing is especially beholden to the price of wood, as most structures are fully framed with traditional milled dimensional lumber and panels. While market conditions have eased somewhat, they’re still highly subject to supply chain disruptions like shortages and delivery issues, let alone the overall increased prices. Historically, framing lumber costs roughly $250-$300 per one thousand board feet, but it has seen massive temporary fluctuations up to $1500 or more in recent years before finally settling closer to past prices.

“We’re involved so early in planning and design, typically a full year before construction begins, that we can monitor the local market and provide those insights to our clients,” George adds. “Markets fluctuate wildly and quickly, but as our clients’ trusted ally, we can provide options and advise when to begin materials procurement and when to wait weeks or months for more favorable market conditions.”

George and his teams maintain this focus on astute schedule management and advisement throughout the construction process, especially when wood framing is underway and particularly vulnerable to the elements and delays.

“Wood materials are sensitive and can’t sit for too long, exposed to the weather,” George says. “We carefully map out our material production rates, stage framing and dry-in and coordinate material deliveries to match our schedule, because once we set that schedule, we keep it going and never stop.”

Multifamily Experts

When market conditions are fraught, when schedules are sensitive to every potential delay and when clients depend on timely quality, Balfour Beatty serves as a proven ally. George and his teams in Georgia and the Carolinas have honed their expertise over several years, developing a repeatedly tested ethic of early and proactive engagement that empowers client decision-making.

Equipped with our market knowledge, expert scheduling efficiencies and a relationship built on proven trust, our clients can make decisions that produce successful project outcomes, while George and our Balfour Beatty multifamily teams do what we’re best at: building critical housing developments that prepare our communities for change and growth.