FloR Systems shifts to commercial market

LONGMONT — When the building and construction industry slammed up against the recent recession wall, a lot of companies scrambled to keep their doors open.

For Jonathan Williams, increasing services and shifting to a more profitable market not only kept his company in the game — but also turned a challenging time into an ongoing opportunity.

“In 2006 and 2007, we had multiple residential projects, whereas last year, that number went down to four as we moved into the commercial market more,” said Williams, FloR Systems’ manager and co-owner. “So far this year, that market has been 99 percent of our business.”

“And as an architect firm, we felt we could offer better services for everyone by bringing more to the table and increasing the scope of our work.”

Those services include construction site excavation and handling the utilities.

The result of the shifts and additions shows in FloR Systems’ revenue, placing it No. 3 on the Boulder County Business Report’s Mercury 100 list of fastest-growing private companies in Boulder and Broomfield counties with less than $2 million in annual revenue.

The company posted revenue of $377,000 in 2008 and had revenue of $1,480,000 in 2010 — a 293 percent increase.

Williams credits his company’s successful move to focusing more on multiple-family and mixed-use buildings to efforts made developing working relationships with general contractors in Denver.

FloR Systems originally focused on making sure that single-family homes were built to withstand shifts in the ground caused by bentanite.

Found in the soil in various spots along the Front Range, the clay swells when wet, heaves up and causes basement floors and walls to crack if precautions aren’t taken. FloR Systems developed and patented T Span, a structural floor system that elevates basement floors above the dirt so the floor can support itself rather than resting on the soil with the risk of caving to the pressure of bentanite damage.

Williams refers to T Span as FloR Systems’ main product.

The company also uses commercial composite technology — V Deck — that provides low corrosion structural floors and decks with no mold-feeding wood fiber.

Work with post tensioned concrete slabs has added to FloR Systems’ bottom line as well.

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