KSHB 41 reporter Charlie Keegan covers politics on both sides of the state line. If you have a story idea to share, you can send Charlie an email at charlie.keegan@kshb.com.
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Tariffs have been in the lesson plan for Steve Bennett. He teaches construction management at Johnson County Community College. Thursday’s class touched on a series of tariffs that President Donald Trump announced Wednesday.
One of Trump’s goals is to encourage companies to build products in the United States instead of importing items into the United States. In order to build products in America, companies have to build manufacturing facilities first, which is where the students in Bennett’s class come into play.
“People like you are needed to build these jobs,” Bennett told his students.
Building the production facilities will take time, Bennett warned.
Before teaching, he worked in the construction industry. He said crews can build simple manufacturing plants and warehouses in less than one year. Larger. more complex facilities will take years to build.
“We can typically build a warehouse in six months. I have built one in 4 and half months,” Bennett said. “It’s what we call fast-tracking. What we call design-build.”
Kevin Lewis is the CEO of Henderson Companies in Lenexa. The firm uses the design-build approach. This is where you design the facility while you build it. It shaves time off the project's length.
“Those are words we love to hear. Design-build is something we’re passionate about,” Lewis said.
He laid out the typical steps for building a new manufacturing facility.
It starts by finding land for the project. Oftentimes, these projects require a lot of land, and cities require owners to build them in certain areas with special zoning privileges.
Lewis wants all his clients to make sure the project will be profitable. He doesn’t want to build something the client can’t pay for.
Then, engineers and architects design the facility.
Finally, companies buy the materials and begin building.
“Long story short, it’s going to take a little while for this to all work through the process and for some of these new construction projects to come to fruition,” Lewis summarized.
Both Lewis and Bennett said the construction labor market is short-staffed and has been since the COVID-19 pandemic. They believe the lack of workers might also slow down progress on building new manufacturing facilities.
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