10/1/2009
Montgomery Business Journal
October 2009
by Tom Ensey
Perfect Harmony
TCU Consulting is run by two owners – one black, one white
The owners of TCU Consulting would like to see their business model become business as usual in the River Region. Ken Upchurch III is white, Percy Thomas is black. Both ran their own construction companies before they joined forces to form TCU in 2005.
The company offers advice and oversight in planning, budgeting, scheduling, bidding and the actual construction of building projects large and small.
Before going into business together, Upchurch and Thomas shared a mutual respect, and between them, they had years of experience, expertise and contacts.
“We’d been friends, competitors and workmates for 30 years,” said Upchurch, who studied the concept of starting a program management company for “four or five years” before he felt the time was right.
He also felt the Montgomery business climate was right for him to seek a black partner. Thomas concurred.
Upchurch said Thomas, who worked with his six brothers in Thomas Construction and Masonry, fit his idea of a partner.
“We’d worked together so long, we came from the same business culture and I liked his business ethics,” said Upchurch, who still runs his own construction company, as does Thomas. “He had grown his company the old-fashioned way. He got in there and knocked heads. He got where he was with hard work.”
It didn’t take long to see that the partnership was a good one. The Montgomery County Commission was their first customer, which came as a surprise.
Upchurch said he asked then-Montgomery County Commission Chairman Todd Strange if the new company could interview for the county jail project “for the practice, mostly.”
Upchurch said the Commission interviewed several large companies from across the Southeast before their turn came.
“My partner handled the introduction – I was going to talk about the technical stuff,” he said.
Thomas made an impact with his first sentence.
“We’re a local firm and we pay local taxes,” he said. They got the bid.
The Montgomery County Detention Facility came in under budget after paying TCU its fee. The surplus allowed the county to do other building projects.
“All our clients will tell you we have saved them money,” Upchurch said.
It’s a small company with about a dozen employees, Upchurch said from the headquarters on Bell Road . That’s good for the customer, he said.
“You pick up the phone, you get one of the principals,” he said.
Clients have come in quick succession, among them a $165 million building project by Montgomery County Public Schools, about $200 million at Alabama State , and smaller projects, including a $7 million job for Montgomery Academy and $4 million for the YMCA.
The success came after a rocky start that saw negative newspaper articles, skepticism about Thomas’s and Upchurch’s relationship, and an ugly, public lawsuit about the project at ASU. A judge threw the case out on summary judgment, Upchurch said.
Thomas said he felt pressure in his own community.
“Some people thought I should have gone into business with another black,” Thomas said.
Upchurch said the black-white issue is not an issue in the company because of their shared ethics. And they have no choice but to get along, he said.
“We don’t have a third party to mitigate our disputes,” he said. “We’re it.”
He was disappointed at the opposition they encountered.
“I would have thought that the community would have recognized what we were doing,” he said. “That maybe making money could cross racial lines, and that might serve as an incentive to follow our example instead of questioning it, and get past some of the street talk.”
But both men agree that’s behind them and they believe they have earned the respect of the business community.
“This is a 50-50 partnership,” Thomas said. “We’ve managed to open doors on both sides, the white and black communities. They have to see that a black and a white can work together for the betterment of the community.”
TCU Consulting Projects
- MONTGOMERY COUNTY DETENTION FACILITY AND ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE BUILDING CONVERSION
- ALABAMA STATE UNIVERSITY'S EDUCATION BUILDING, STUDENT HOUSING RENOVATION AND STUDENT UNION FACILITY
- MONTGOMERY ACADEMY CAMPUS FACILITY UPGRADES
- MONTGOMERY PUBLIC SCHOOLS FACILITY PLAN, PHASE I
- MONTGOMERY YMCA CAPITAL BUILDING PROGRAM