I was standing in a buffet line at a conference reception in Denver. I started chatting with the two people next to me, and we just hit it off. Turned out they were both from the University of Kansas. By the end of the night, we had exchanged business cards and they had invited me to come visit their campus.

That was the fall of 2014, and I had absolutely no idea where that conversation was headed.

Before There Was a Project

I took them up on the invitation and visited campus a few weeks later. Toured the facilities, met some of the team, and started to get a sense of what KU was trying to accomplish. There was no formal opportunity at the time. Over the next several months, we kept finding reasons to get together. Every visit, the conversations went a little further and the relationship got a little stronger.

When KU eventually put out a solicitation for a major campus redevelopment, we already knew them. We had spent time on their campus, sat with their people, and listened to what they were trying to accomplish and the challenges standing in their way. The more we learned, the more we believed we could genuinely help them get where they wanted to go. 

We submitted our proposal and were fortunate enough to be selected. The scope was significant: a complete transformation of 55 acres of campus, including a new science building, student union, central utility plant, parking garage, student apartments, a residence hall with dining, and all of the infrastructure to tie it together. It was the kind of project that under normal circumstances might take a university 15 or 20 years to accomplish through traditional means and state funding. KU wanted to do it all at once, and they needed a partner who could help make that happen.

The timeline was aggressive from the start. In about six months, we designed all seven buildings to a point where we could guarantee a price and a schedule, negotiated every term of the contract, and got the deal signed. From there, it was two and a half years of construction, with two different contractors on site simultaneously and a different architect for each phase. It was complex, fast-moving, and one of the most rewarding projects we've ever been part of.

A Week That Changed Everything

The project had barely started when something unexpected happened that could have destroyed the relationship before it had a chance to take root.

About a week in, our team was doing early site work when they came across a buried line. Someone asked if they could cut it, and they did. It turned out to be the fiber line serving the entire KU campus, and when it went down, everything went with it — internet, data, building access, card readers on every door. To make matters worse, the state of Kansas standardized testing ran on that same network, and it was a testing weekend, meaning every student in the state who was supposed to take their exam that weekend now couldn't.

There are a lot of ways a team can respond to a moment like that. You can slow down, call a meeting, figure out who's at fault, and promise to get back to the client with a plan. Our team went into action immediately. They stayed up all night, spliced the line themselves, and by 7am the next morning, about 80% of the campus was back online. By Monday, everything was fully restored.

Nobody asked them to do that, and nobody told them they had to stay. They just understood that when you cause a problem, you own it and you fix it as fast as you possibly can. That's just always been how we’ve operated.

What surprised me was what happened next. Instead of the client being angry or losing confidence in us, the opposite happened. They had seen, in a difficult moment, exactly what kind of team they were working with. And from that point forward, the relationship was on a completely different level.

What Grew from There

Over the course of the project, the team at KU became more than clients. They became good friends. The woman who served as General Counsel on the project and I always make a point to catch up whenever I'm in the area, and the first thing she does is run over and give me a hug. Those kinds of friendships don't come from a contract. They come from years of working through hard things together, celebrating the wins together, and coming out the other side with something you're both proud of.

We delivered all seven buildings and still operate and maintain them today. But what none of us expected was how the relationship would continue to grow long after the project was complete.

One of our primary contacts at KU eventually left the university and took a position at another institution, and one of his first calls was to us. He didn't issue a solicitation or put it out to bid. He just picked up the phone and said, I have a project on my new campus, will you come help? We did. Then KU came back to us for a second major project, telling us directly that the trust from the first time around was the reason they chose us again. And just recently, a prospective client toured the buildings we delivered at KU as part of their evaluation. One of the team members we had worked with on the original project was still there, and she walked them through the buildings herself. The things she said about working with us were completely unprompted and incredibly kind. The client awarded us the project the next day.

That's four projects and counting, all tracing back to a conversation in a buffet line in Denver over a decade ago.

An Unexpected Connection

During the years we were working at KU, our team was flying in and out of Kansas City every week. We got to know the city — its restaurants, its neighborhoods, its people. We got to know the airport, which at the time needed a lot of work. And through our regular presence in the community, we built real familiarity and connections with people across Kansas City, including those in the aviation department who were trying to figure out what to do about their growing needs.

When the city eventually put out an RFP for a new airport terminal, we already knew Kansas City. We had been flying in and out every week for years to deliver the KU project, and in that time we had gotten to know the city, its people, and its needs in a way that you simply can't replicate during a proposal process.

That familiarity, and the reputation we had built through our work at KU, played a meaningful role in our decision to pursue the airport and ultimately in the outcome. The Kansas City International Airport became the largest project in our company's history, and none of it would have happened if two strangers hadn't started talking in a buffet line in Denver.

What I've Learned

If there's one thing this business has taught me over the years, it's that the relationships that matter most are almost never the ones you plan for. They start with a genuine conversation, they grow through consistent follow-through and honest communication, and they lead to places that nobody could have predicted at the outset.

The KU story is the clearest example, but it's not the only one. Across our portfolio, the pattern keeps showing up. The projects we're most proud of came from relationships that were built long before the work started and maintained long after it was finished. And the trust behind those projects was never something we rushed or forced. It was earned over time, through showing up consistently and treating people the way we'd want to be treated.

I don't know where our next great project will come from. But I'm pretty confident it will start the same way most of them have — with a conversation we weren't planning to have, with someone we weren't trying to impress, in a place we didn't expect to be.