Ideal Contracting

Ideal Contracting is a Detroit-based general contractor that also self-performs its own structural steel, a combination that sets it apart from firms that sub everything out. Founded in 1998, the firm offers general contracting, construction management, design-build, and steel fabrication and erection, and it’s been named ENR Midwest’s Contractor of the Year. Ideal handled the structural steel package on the University of Michigan’s Leinweber Computer Science building, and it’s erected steel for landmarks like the JW Marriott Detroit and Ford’s BlueOval Battery Park. With a workforce in the thousands during peak seasons, the firm keeps a heavy self-perform bench that gives it more control over schedule and cost.

Ideal Contracting is a Detroit-based construction firm headquartered on Clark Street, part of the family-owned Ideal Group of Companies, with a second office in Ann Arbor. It has grown into one of Michigan’s largest general contractors while building a national reputation as a steel erector.

The company organizes its work into three groups. The Construction Group delivers general contracting and multiple project-delivery methods; the Steel Group operates as an AISC-certified steel erector and fabricator serving projects nationwide; and the Special Projects Group handles facility updates and emergency repairs where speed matters. That structure lets a single firm self-perform steel, concrete, demolition and earthwork rather than routing each to a different subcontractor.

By its own numbers, Ideal reports around $500 million in annual revenue and more than 400 skilled-trades personnel, and it has been named a General Motors Supplier of the Year twenty times. Its market work spans automotive and manufacturing, distribution and warehousing, higher education, commercial, sports and entertainment, power and energy, heavy industrial and mission-critical data centers.

The firm’s footprint has expanded well beyond Michigan into the Midwest, Southeast, Southwest and West. For owners in the industrial and manufacturing sectors especially, Ideal pairs self-perform steel capability with general contracting under one roof — a combination that is relatively uncommon among firms its size.