A M King’s 20th Anniversary:
10 Achievements That Define Us
By Dan Crist
We are celebrating A M King’s 20th Anniversary this year. While we have arrived at this milestone moment, this won’t be your typical retrospective and it’s not significant just because of our longevity. This is about the integrity we’ve demonstrated and the collaborative culture we’ve created. Our track record of successful projects speaks for itself. What I most want to get across is why we’ve stayed in the trenches with long-term clients, what our innovative facility solutions do for companies in our niche markets, and how we provide Design-Build better than what’s being offered in our industry.
Allow me to count down 10 achievements that I’m most proud of and talk about their impact:
10 / A M King has performed Design-Build services and completed projects in more than 30 states.
Our national network of expert Design-Build teams work across the United States, allowing our clients to grow without geographic limitations. We have the flexibility and agility to collaborate with companies in all regions of the country. Just as our early partnership with ALDI US flourished and they expanded from their corporate headquarters in Illinois, we strengthened our ties with other companies like Cheney Brothers Inc., Mission Produce Inc., Veronesi Holding S.p.A., ZF Transmissions and Northeast Foods.
These clients and many others have taken our teams through the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, Midwest, West and Southwest, as we seamlessly and efficiently take visions from concept to completed facilities.
9 / We expanded our core capabilities beyond in-house design and construction, adding Property Consulting and Facility Services.
At some point, growing food and manufacturing companies are faced with the need to identify property that will meet both current and future needs. Whether a company is searching for a greenfield site or an existing building, the process for identifying, analyzing, and ultimately selecting property is complex. Through the years, we have expanded A M King’s service offerings in response to client requests, providing a full range of Property Consulting.
Our experts have the ability to match facility requirements with proposed properties, provide comparative analysis of different properties, manage regulatory issues and environmental concerns, evaluate demographics and workforce availability, and determine the best value in property considerations — all while ensuring that property consulting is integrated with design and construction for a seamless process of project development.
When the facility is complete, we can provide ongoing facility management, embedding our teams within a client’s facility to perform ongoing maintenance services and the management of Cap-Ex projects.
8 / We have successfully completed thousands of projects for our manufacturing clients.
Having delivered thousands of complex projects to leading manufacturing companies with highly specialized needs, our teams understand the logistical challenges of working in large, state-of-the-art manufacturing environments where concurrent construction and operational activities are taking place.
We have completed more than 3,000 projects for GE Vernova Greenville alone, a General Electric division that focuses on power generation for heavy-duty gas and 1.5-megawatt wind turbines.
Over the course of A M King’s history, we have also provided ongoing design, project management and facility services for Honeywell Aerospace, ZF Transmissions, and other companies, offering consistency and discipline both in our leadership teams and processes.
7 / During the past 20 years, A M King has designed, built and renovated nearly 15 million square feet of food processing, cold storage and distribution space.
A M King’s experts are highly skilled in food processing design and construction, focusing on complex, hygienic facilities for the meat, seafood, baking, produce and ready-to-eat food industries. Our full range of Design-Build services makes it possible for food processing operations to successfully expand, renovate or improve operations and outputs. Every branch of A M King, from preconstruction to design to construction, is focused on sanitation, innovation, efficiency and sustainability.
We also have extensive knowledge about elements unique to food distribution and controlled-temperature facilities, including refrigeration systems; blast chillers; specialty floor construction; specialty doors; thermal envelope systems; fire protection systems; and storage and pallet racking systems, including Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS).
6 / We have secured 35 prestigious industry awards for our work.
Our projects have been recognized for excellence in design, project management, quality, innovation, performance, safety, schedule, and customer satisfaction. We are honored by the industry awards that we have won from organizations such as American Institute of Architects (AIA), Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), Controlled Temperature Building Association (CEBA), Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), Food Engineering magazine and Engineering News-Record.
5 / A M King has developed an industry-leading safety program.
A M King approaches every project with a primary focus on the health and safety of each individual who steps on site. The safety process begins at project inception and is then communicated to all team members, including subcontractors. Strict adherence to best jobsite safety practices is evidenced by an EMR significantly lower than the industry average. I am proud to report that we have achieved more than 3 million work hours without a lost-time accident.
For our efforts, we’ve earned Diamond Level in ABC’s STEP safety program for eight years running. Diamond Level is ABC’s highest level of national safety recognition, signifying that our work is 645% safer than industry average. In addition to our extraordinary focus on the safety of jobsite workers and service people, many of our safety measures are designed to protect the building’s occupants and end users.
Who better to bring the stories behind Design-Build to life than our experts? I’m always impressed by each author’s insightful perspectives, which are written directly for our target markets. They’ve got expertise, intelligence and passion and will find a way to make a complex issue clear, useful and, in some cases, even entertaining.
Our blogs cover issues related to controlled-temperature facilities, USDA-certified facilities, defining design solutions, cost efficiencies, leadership, community engagement, and much more. We know these topics are hitting the mark because we just happen to have a new client who initially discovered our company through one of our blogs.
3 / A M King employees have dedicated more than 6,000 hours to community organizations and touched thousands of lives.
Community engagement builds relationships—between A M King and the communities where we work, with our clients, and amongst our employees. Getting involved in charitable events that are important to our clients can achieve stronger ties through participation in meaningful activities. In fact, focusing on helping those who need it most can provide as much benefit to us as it does for the people and organizations we support.
Here are just a few of the organizations we’ve partnered with over the years: Ronald McDonald House Charities, Salvation Army, CMS Schools, and 24 Foundation. Through the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program, we’ve provided Christmas gifts for more than 1,500 children in the Charlotte and Greenville communities.
For Starmount Academy of Excellence, our elementary school partner, our company has donated nearly 6,500 school uniforms and approximately 64,000 essential items for classrooms. We are happy to participate in such meaningful programs year after year.
2 / A M King has maintained its original focus since its founding on March 2, 2004.
My journey with A M King began about six months after the company was founded by Brian King, Johnny Aiken, and Sid Mitchell in 2004. We have remained focused on our vision and mission to be 100 percent Design-Build, concentrate on the food and manufacturing sectors, create a unique company culture, and develop and maintain long-term client relationships.
1 / Our leadership has created an entrepreneurial culture, which strengthened our transition to employee ownership in 2021.
A highly collaborative culture at A M King sparks the innovative solutions we have brought to the clients I have mentioned, and many others. The way that our teams work so well together isn’t by chance. First, it’s the nature of our Design-Build process, carried out in a working environment devoid of silos. Our in-house design and construction teams work together, fostering an atmosphere of trust, transparency and cooperation. Second, our success is due to careful selection of talented, entrepreneurial-minded individuals with integrity and ambition.
The ultimate vote of confidence in our teams came from Brian King when he transferred ownership of A M King to an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) in 2021, giving every employee ownership in the organization we’ve worked so hard to build.
While A M King was a great company under Brian’s ownership, the transition to a 100 percent ESOP has further improved the services we offer our clients, increased the productivity and efficiency of our work, and will maximize our potential to continue to achieve even greater accomplishments for our future.
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This year, I am honored to begin my tenure as President of A M King, proud to lead our company into a new era and excited to serve our clients in ways they can’t even imagine yet.
