Founded in 1984: Cope Expanded from General Contracting

COLUMBIANA, Ohio – C. Tucker Cope & Associates started in 1984 as a general contracting company and 40 years later is the largest metal building contractor in Ohio.

Based in Columbiana, the design-build company specializes in commercial and industrial construction.

“Our philosophy here is we’re going to do anything that’s tied to a metal building,” says President Tucker Cope.

His parents, Charles Thomas “Tucker” and Linda Cope, started the business as a general contracting company. Tucker Cope started running day-to-day operations in 2002 and bought the company in 2019.

After earning his bachelor and master’s degrees in engineering, Cope worked in the southern United States, designing metal buildings and learning more about their benefits.

“When I came back [to the area], we decided to focus on the metal building industry,” Cope says.

Metal building is cost effective for commercial and manufacturing space, he says. And metal buildings allow flexibility and durability, adds Andy Hippley, vice president of construction.

“You can always add on to a metal building relatively easily if you’re set up for it,” Hippley explains.

Cope says the metal building industry fits well within the design build world.

Besides being the largest metal building contractor in Ohio, based on tonnage of steel purchased, the company is the 16th largest in the country.

Other leadership team members include Tom Nock, vice president of engineering; and Frank Pelino, chief financial officer.

Nock is also Cope’s partner in a related company, Engineering Direct, housed in the same building and started in 2013.

Cope points to “a great group of people” as the primary driver of the company’s success. Having people at the company who excel at their jobs allows everyone to focus on their areas and grow as a team.

Many team members have been with the company for years.

When the company added Engineering Direct, things started to take off even more.

Having its own engineering company allows C. Tucker Cope & Associates to be a “true design build contractor,” or one that controls all of those elements in the same building, he says. That means they can walk down the hall to solve problems.

“We’re very fast and nimble on our projects and our problem solving because it’s all under one roof,” Cope says.

The company doesn’t have to subcontract for the engineering work.  “With our experience and knowledge, we have a lot of good people on the team handling different areas of it,” he says.

The company employs about 30 people in the field with the engineering and office staffs adding another 10. “We also provide engineering services for other contractors, other engineering and architectural groups,” Nock, the VP of engineering, explains.

Besides designing for C. Tucker Cope & Associates, Engineering Direct also works on outside projects with stormwater site design or metal building projects.

“Our projects are a little bit unique in that we do our own drawings and engineering…,” Hippley says. “A lot of them, I would say, prefer working with us.”

They have a say in the engineering upfront, not only regarding pricing but also practicality and constructability in the field – if it actually works, Hippley explains.

“These contractors are good at what they do but don’t always have a say in what they’re doing because they just get a set of drawings and it’s ‘build this,’” he says.

The problem is that what’s in those drawings isn’t always practical from a construction standpoint, according to Cope.

“Ours is a living, breathing design,” he says. “It has input from all sides: the people who are going to put it together in the field, the engineers that review it and the end customer as far as cost.”

The company was invited a few years ago to build a 140,000-square-foot extrusion plant in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“The contractor that did the site and foundation work liked our group so much – that our buildings were buildable, they knew what we were talking about – that they reached out to us to help them develop another project in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a medical manufacturing facility,” Cope says.

The company told Cope that Engineering Direct had created drawings its foundation crews understood and could build.

That also sets the company apart from others, Nock says. “There’s preliminary engineering involved on the front end that others don’t have the capacity to put into it.”

C. Tucker Cope earned AC478 accreditation through the Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association. It’s a mark of quality.

“It means every guy is certified to assemble metal buildings,” Cope says. “Metal buildings are a complex animal.”

Nock has been involved with various stormwater boards and he’s versed in the regulations involved with stormwater and the Clean Water Act.

“You’ve got to be experienced in not only putting a building up. For public safety and cost in mind, you also want to move the material, move the dirt and manipulate the land to promote water quality…to address the environment but also be cost effective as well,” Nock says.

Pictured at top: C. Tucker Cope, president of C. Tucker Cope Design – Build, along with Andy Hippley, vice president of construction, and Tom Nock, vice president of engineering, stand by the company logo at the business in Columbiana. It was started in 1984 by Cope’s parents. Nock is also Cope’s partner in Engineering Direct, housed in the same building.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.