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W.S. Walker Construction

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By Eric Pulsifer Friday, 20 February 2009

As a teenager, Stephen Walker began working for the family business — a small construction company in Austin. In 1990, when his parents decided to get out of the general contractor business, Stephen and his wife, Tammy, purchased their equipment, and W.S. Walker Construction was born.

Married in 1980, the couple had never worked together before, and Tammy said many friends warned against going into business with a spouse.

“When we decided to do this years ago, people said we wouldn’t make it. But you pull up your boot straps and just go and do it,” Tammy said. “It’s worked out well. We actually still eat lunch together.”

As general contractor, W.S. Walker takes plans from an architect and brings those ideas on paper to life by working with subcontractors, such as plumbers, electricians and air conditioning/heating technicians. The company also manages the bidding process, getting cost estimates from subcontractors and adding them up for a total project bid cost. The cost needs to be low to win the bid for the project over other companies, but must be high enough to include all projected expenses.

“It can be overwhelming, especially when you’re talking about a project that costs over a million dollars,” Tammy said.

In the company’s early days, the husband-wife team worked mainly on portable buildings for school districts around the state. While they have grown to work on everything from commercial buildings to churches, a majority of the jobs handled by W.S. Walker are government projects — school remodels and improvements.

Currently, the company is working for the Austin Independent School District on renovations to Odom Elementary School and Bowie High School in southwest Austin. And though W.S. Walker does work around the state — from a jail in Bastrop to a school in Killeen — Tammy said they prefer to stay within a 150-mile radius of Leander.

“We’re hoping to get more local, as well — Leander, Liberty Hill,” Tammy said.

While the option to expand and take on lucrative residential construction projects has been considered, Tammy said they have been fortunate and satisfied focusing on government jobs, which offer more conservative pay but consistent work, even in a time of economic uncertainty.

“We’ve been very blessed that we’ve stuck with [mostly government jobs] and not gone into residential because that’s proven to be more volatile,” Tammy said. “Some companies feel like the faster you grow the better it gets, but we’re happy where we’re at. We felt like we have what we can keep under control without pulling each other’s hair out.”