ON THE LEVEL: Construction runs in the family for former Mortenson leader David Wood

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By Brian Johnson
BridgeTower Media Newswires

After a 10-year run with Mortenson Construction, where he worked his way up from intern to market sector leader, David Wood decided to blaze his own trail in the construction business.

Wood founded Minneapolis-based Ancoats Construction in 2020. Focusing on mid-size projects, the construction management firm has quietly gained a foothold with projects that include the first and second phases of a North American headquarters project for German sensor company Sick Inc. in Bloomington, Minnesota, projects with a combined value of about $85 million.

Other Ancoats projects completed or under construction include an $18 million parking ramp for the Bloomington Port Authority, an $11 million facility for the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota, and a $1.7 million office remodel for Boston Scientific in Maple Grove, all in Minnesota.

Wood was exposed to the business of building things at an early age. His father, longtime Mortenson executive John Wood, spent his entire career in construction.

In the following interview, David Wood talks about following in his father’s footsteps, his reason for starting Ancoats, the inspiration behind his company’s name, and the labor challenge in the construction sector, among other topics. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Talk about your construction journey and how you started Ancoats.

 A: My dad, John Wood, spent his career in the construction industry. When I was a kid, I was effectively immersed in the business, whether that was touring job sites or playing hide-and-seek in the hallways at the office. I was always surrounded by it.

I ultimately went to college for engineering. I got my degree in construction engineering and got involved with Mortenson as an intern during school, and then started my career full-time for Mortenson out in Denver. I spent 10 years with Mortenson, which was an unbelievable place to cut my teeth and learn what it meant to be a strong builder. I look back incredibly fondly on the times that I spent with the company. Ultimately, back in 2020, I chose to embark on my own journey to start Ancoats.

Q: How is your father doing?

A: He’s doing well. He and my mom both are doing great. My dad is still involved with the business, with Mortenson, in some capacity.  He spent over 40 years of his career with them; he had an unbelievable career. There are many landmarks in this town and across the country, for that matter, that have his thumbprint on it. For me, being surrounded by that, it was hard not to be inspired by his journey.

Q: I recall that your father was, and probably still is, a big Manchester United fan. And I understand that Ancoats is a district in Manchester. Can you talk about how your company got its name?

A: My dad was born and raised in Manchester, England. You’re right, Ancoats is a small district of Manchester. My grandparents and my great-grandparents were born and raised in Ancoats, so that’s sort of the short story as to where the name came from.

The longer version is, Ancoats, despite being this small town in a small country in the middle of the Atlantic, became an important port along the supply chain during the Industrial Revolution because of the innovations in manufacturing equipment that they developed and implemented in Ancoats. So symbolically, for a small, hard-working, very blue-collar community to emerge as this incredibly influential place during a transformative period of global change was deeply meaningful to me.

Q: What types of projects do you typically pursue?

A: The vision for the company was one that was established after I started my career in Denver. After working there for six, seven years, I moved back. I grew up here, moved back to Minneapolis and then worked in the Twin Cities market for a handful of years. What I had observed in that period was that I felt the mid-market project — a project that might be $5 million to $25 million — wasn’t adequately addressed by the players in this market.

Projects that fell into that spectrum felt like they were either too small to get an appropriate amount of attention from a larger firm and might be too big or complex for the smaller construction companies that operated in our market. And so the vision for the business was to try to effectively approach that market.

In terms of the projects we’re pursuing or executing, most of them sort of fall in that spectrum. Some of the larger things we have going on would include the second phase of a North American campus for a company called Sick in Bloomington, in the South Loop. Sick, who’ve been an unbelievable client of ours, are a German-headquartered photoelectric sensor manufacturing business.

We’ve done a number of projects for Boston Scientific over the four years that we’ve been in business. About 80% of our work falls into either the category of corporate or life sciences, and so most of our work, 50-plus projects, have ended up in those two markets. Other work we do includes some work for nonprofits. We’ve done a couple of restaurant projects, some sports work.

Our first strategic growth opportunity is market sector expansion. And so we’re currently evaluating the other markets we feel like we can contribute to and have good strategic alignment with.

Q: We’re hearing chatter again about the labor challenge in construction. We’ve talked a lot about interest rates. What’s your assessment of where we’re headed with the construction sector?

A: There’s been talk in the market about the challenges with finding skilled labor across the industry, across the country, for years. That’s definitely still a problem. We saw recently very positive news out of Wisconsin. Associated Builders and Contractors in the state of Wisconsin recently indicated that their apprenticeship class in 2024 is the highest ever recorded, which obviously is tremendously positive news. Hopefully, that’s not an isolated instance, and rather the beginning of a trend.

I think there’s some cautious optimism about where the labor pool could be headed. It is definitely still one of, if not the biggest issues facing our industry.

The interest rates, of course, are impacting new development and construction. We’ll see what happens at the federal level with interest rates and how quickly some of the capital gets infused back into the market.

Q: Any other thoughts on the market in general or opportunities your company is pursuing?

A: One area we’ve been spending a lot of time in — and when we’re having conversations with clients, it becomes a more common conversation — is around sustainability.

Obviously, with the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed recently, there are other incentives available to projects to take advantage of subsidies or tax credits as it relates to investing in green energy or responsible attributes of projects as it relates to the environment. In terms of conversations we have, it’s for new construction — finding unique ways by which a project or a building or its systems can be as environmentally responsible as possible. In other instances, we’re having clients trying to strategize ways by which they can either electrify or decarbonize their existing assets.

I feel very good about some of the work we’ve been able to do in that specific sphere and, frankly, where the market appears to be headed in that direction. So opportunities moving forward, I imagine, for us in particular, could be largely focused in that arena.