Billboard Insider is running a series in which Arthur Outdoor’s James Douglas talks about starting, running, and selling an out-of-home company.  Last week Douglas talked about permitting.  This week he talks about building signs.

One step at a time building

Rome, Georgia is a smaller town and we were limited on vendors – which favors a first-time billboard installer. Initially, we were planning on outsourcing all construction to a 3rd party that specializes in building billboards. Then something changed our mind.

Legos. When my brothers and I were little, we loved Legos. And so if you ask yourself the question – “How do you build a castle out of legos?” the answer is “One brick at a time.” And so, that was our approach. We only had so much money on hand to invest, and it was imperative to keep construction costs down.

Our first step was to find a structural engineer. A website called google.com helped with that. Ray Cowen had a particular place he liked to meet – in the Food Court at the Mount Berry Square Mall. And that is where we met many times. On our first meeting, we described what we wanted – I-Beam structures similar to those owned by Lamar around town. We met a few times after that and $500.00 later, we had our structural design.

Legos. One step at a time. It became our next job to source all of the materials and contractors to build the structure. “You have to find the steel” was the guidance we were given. And from there the pieces (pun intended) fell into place. We found our steel at Coosa Valley Steel and found a welder, a crane to lift the sign, a derrick to dig the holes, and a concrete truck to fill in those holes. And once the sign was up, an electrician wire the thing.

We ended up using Camel City Posters for our vinyl and printing needs and a local company to install the vinyl. And someone to cut the trees back in the summer when they were too high.

All that to say, when we started to look at this process head on, it was overwhelming. So, How do you build a billboard company? One piece, one step at a time, of course.

Thank you Lego.

 The structures we built

They were steel i-beam, 12′ by 24’s.  Britt McConnell at Formetco provided us with the faces and the catwalks.  All we did was build the i-beam structures and the lateral supports. The stringers, the catwalks, the lights and the billboard faces came from Formetco.

Installing structures

If we were to outsource it would cost us $35,000-50,000.   By doing it ourselves we saved money.  We cut construction costs in half.   When it came to assembling the faces it was me, my brother, my little brother and my dad.  We put these 800-1,000 pound signs on sawhorses.  We had a couple drills and just figured it out.   We didn’t have a crane to lift it up.  We built both signs in November and December.  When we got to the construction site we had a dead deer right beside the board in the snow. We’re always going to remember that.

Did you do land surveys?

Absolutely.  That was one of the first things that the structural engineer told us was that if you’re going to build a sign, build it in the right location.  Make sure you build it right.  If a land survey and a plat is going to cost you about $1,200 that’s going to save you $10,000’s of thousands down the road.

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