History

Henry Turner founded Turner Construction Company 110 years ago based on the core values of teamwork, integrity and commitment. Today, The company’s reach is global, and each of its offices upholds its founder’s vision to provide valuable services to clients, build partnerships in the community, and deliver important resources such as schools, hospitals, workplaces, and social and cultural centers.

Henry Turner’s insistence on quality of service, hard work, and responsiveness to client needs remains the company credo and has led to its success in a competitive industry. The company’s ability to address changing conditions and demands, find and serve diverse markets, and expand its services has resulted in the company to growing far beyond its founder’s dreams.

But the world is changing, and so is Turner. Even though business as usual has meant adhering to the highest of standards, it is no longer enough. There are a multitude of obstacles, including increased competition, and more complex and demanding technology, and Turner must address these challenges.

The construction industry is filled with buzzwords and phrases: “We want to do things differently,” or “We have to be innovative,” or “We need more teamwork and collaboration!” Turner transforms these vague concepts into concrete ways of doing business. The company uses sustainable systems and practices while implementing new and better approaches to deliver client projects.

Using the principles of Lean construction, Turner finds ways to minimize waste and maximize use of time, labor, and materials. Planning is integral, collaboration is key, and the result is an uninterrupted workflow, which helps deliver a project to the full satisfaction of the client.

Turner has become the leading industry exponent of the transformational construction tool and process Building Information Modeling (BIM), with more than $30 billion in BIM project experience. With BIM, the company builds its project twice: the first time digitally, so that every member of the building team can see a fully detailed, 3D model of the project before ground is broken; the second time in the field, after construction activities are fully coordinated.

As a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council, Turner has long been involved in environmentally sensitive building practices. Turner now has more than 400 green projects either completed or in progress.

In addition to building green, Turner has implemented sustainable company practices, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, seeking LEED Certification for Turner offices, establishing a set of sustainability standards for  field offices and jobsite trailers, and implementing a Construction Waste Management plan that has resulted in the diversion of more than one million tons of construction waste from landfills since 2005.

Recently, Turner Construction Company lost a legendary member of its family, former President Howard S. Turner, the nephew of founder Henry Turner. Under Howard Turner’s leadership, the company launched its international operations, formalized its community affairs program and established the Turner School of Construction Management. Upon his retirement, he said, “To lead this company, itself a leader among builders, has been an honor and an exciting opportunity for which I am most grateful. Turner has always been known for its depth of talent, regularly fed from the best of each year’s college graduates. The company’s growth will, as in the past, be based on the character and high standards of the Turner staff, its commitment to serve its clients, and the satisfaction all Turner people feel in making a contribution to building lasting monuments of our civilization.”

It is striking how much Turner has changed over the years, and how much it has stayed the same. “A promise made is a promise delivered,” rings as true today as it did in 1902. By investing in leading-edge technology, updating and refining processes, Turner has adapted to the needs of a changing world, and risen to meet its challenges. One hundred and ten years after its inception, Turner looks toward a future, bright with possibility.