Elford, Inc.

Edward “Pop” Elford started this Columbus builder in 1910, and it is still employee-owned and in its fifth generation of leadership. Elford works across construction management, general contracting, design-build and CM at risk, with a second office in Charlotte, North Carolina. The portfolio runs to healthcare, higher education, civic and commercial buildings, multifamily housing and industrial work, alongside a service group that handles small projects for repeat owners. Elford is integrated into the construction manager at risk team with Hensel Phelps on the new terminal at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, a roughly $2 billion, one-million-square-foot replacement that the firm has described as the largest project in its history.

Pop Elford started the company in 1910 with $153.75 in savings. He was a civil engineer who concluded that the fastest way to get integrity into the construction business was to run his own firm, and the timeline the company keeps on its own site is unusually candid about what followed.

In 1926 Elford began the Harding Memorial, a circular Greek-temple monument designed by Eric Fisher Wood and Henry Hornbostel; it finished the following year and President Hoover dedicated it in June 1931. During the Depression, Elford and another Columbus contractor submitted identical bids on the Dublin Bridge and the job was settled by a coin toss. Elford won, and that bridge was the only active project the company had for the rest of the year — so Pop cut everyone to five-hour shifts and put the whole workforce on it rather than lay anyone off. In 1941 the firm built 600 houses in five months for John Galbreath’s Beechwold Homes Co. north of Morse Road. Through the 1950s it worked more or less continuously at Battelle Memorial Institute.

The current portfolio is sorted into thirteen sectors: commercial, government, healthcare, higher education, industrial, K-12 schools, lab, multifamily, non-profit, office, recreation, retail and hospitality. Recent named work includes the Franklin County Mental Health and Addiction Crisis Center for the ADAMH board, the Franklin County Forensic Science Center, the Fran Ryan Center for Columbus Recreation and Parks, the Bob Crane Community Center in Upper Arlington, Rumpke’s Recycling Resource Center, a capital improvements programme for Grandview Heights schools, and Target store builds and renovations.

Safety is treated as a brand asset rather than a compliance line: Elford is an OSHA Star VPP contractor, has taken AGC National Construction Safety Excellence recognition, and has won the Builders Exchange of Central Ohio Safety Achievement award 23 times. It has also been named a Top Work Place in both Columbus and Charlotte.

Bidding runs through a Public Plan Room, and subcontractors prequalify via BuildingConnected. The Columbus headquarters is at 1220 Dublin Road on (614) 488-4000; the Charlotte office is at 10130 Perimeter Parkway, Suite 425 on (704) 398-8890.