6701013

Mr. Durwood Stephenson is one of the founders of the Johnston County Building Industry Association and has blazed the trail for building in Johnston County for over 50 years!  We asked him about his history as he is celebrating his 50 years in business.   Here is what he shared:

M. Durwood Stephenson & Assoc., Inc. began in a shared office in downtown Smithfield on March 22, 1973, providing smaller custom-built homes, primarily for first-time home buyers. In the late 1970’s, we transitioned to building larger custom-built homes, establishing neighborhoods in our exclusive single-family subdivisions in Johnston County. In 1981, we relocated from shared office space into our custom designed space on Highway 70 in Smithfield, which continues to be our headquarters. In order to accommodate our growth and needs, we also constructed a warehouse for equipment and construction personnel in 1981, a short distance from our office.

During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, we began receiving inquiries and requests to construct commercial and industrial facilities for local clients. As the housing market trended to larger tract builders, we focused more on our commercial clients, trending to all commercial in the mid 1990’s. For the past 25+ years, a major portion of our work (more than 80 percent) has been the design, development and construction of medical facilities. The unique and specialty requirements of medical facilities require close co-ordination between design, construction and operations. In order to assure close collaboration between the design and construction teams, we added designers to our team. We became Design-Build Contractors affiliating and working with design professionals: engineers and architects. Our firm also offers consulting services to aid our clients in planning specialty construction services and continues to serve after construction by managing the facilities after the construction is completed. The knowledge and experience of our personnel co-ordinating with our affiliated associates provide our clients with a unique and detailed perspective to assure a high quality cost-efficient project. Our clients and their needs are a priority for our staff and provides structures that meet the needs of their clients. We have a team that is knowledgeable, professional and committed to our clients and their needs. We take great pride in the literally hundreds of projects that we have designed and constructed over the past 50 years. Obviously, all of our projects are a source of great pride and a testament to our commitment to our clients. Our services and commitment adhere to our corporate motto: “Large enough to serve, small enough to care.” Our granddaughter was born in the nursery of our local hospital that we constructed several years ago. Many of our employees receive their medical care in facilities that were designed, developed and constructed by our team. We are indeed fortunate to have a work force with significant experience and commitments to our clients. In recent years, we have had the opportunity and privilege to design and build a large number of institutional and industrial facilities, many with unique requirements and specialty design characteristics.