4 Cornerstone Summer 2025 agchouston.org F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T / C E O Kyle Holland President/CEO, AGC Houston T YPICALLY, WHEN THE BOARD chair and I get together to coor- dinate our columns for Corner- stone magazine, we like to divide and conquer a bit, with each of us taking a different topic. However, this time, Jeremy and I decided to mix it up and talk about the same thing but come at it from our different perspectives. You’ll notice we also switched it up by putting his column first to set the stage! AGC of America’s Convention has always been a great opportunity for our member companies to get content rel- evant to helping them learn and grow their businesses, but at some point after the pandemic, AGC of America adapted a portion of the Convention to be especially relevant for AGC chapter staff across the country. Every year, the AGC of America team does a fantastic job putting together an excellent Staff Track of programming to benefit the chapters, and this year was no different. As we do any time the staff from chapters across the country get together, we took advantage of the chance to share ideas and solve problems together. Each chapter is unique, but all share the same struggles (and opportu- nities) in the daily mission of serving our members. We also got to hear several excellent keynote speakers and engaged in the topics of artificial intelligence and well- ness. Those two topics are particularly relevant to our members right now, and we hope to incorporate them into our programming later this year. In addition to the safety awards Jeremy mentioned, we also got to see one of our members bring home some hardware at Convention this year. Satterfield & Pon- tikes Construction, Inc. received the prestigious Build America Award for their excellent work on the Fort Bend County Epicenter project! Jeremy also wrote about the genesis of our first-ever board retreat, held earlier this year, and it was something we were excited about as a staff for a variety of reasons. First, we always enjoy getting to see any subset of our members come together for any reason, but we also wanted to dedicate time to educating the board members about the amazing programs and services our chapter offers, and to allow them to connect more with our awesome staff. We realized that, while our staff knows the complete ins and outs of all our offerings and our board directs the strategic vision of our chapter, they all have full-time jobs and don’t necessarily wake up every morning thinking, “I wonder what AGC is doing for me today.” At our retreat, we hosted a session where the staff held mini roundtable conversations with small groups of board members, and each member of the staff got 10-15 minutes to share what they do for the chapter and answer any questions the board might have about their respective program areas — I encouraged our staff to show off and brag on themselves a little. Overall, I think it was a great experience for everyone; the board got to put faces to the names of staff mem- bers that they might not have known, and they also learned a lot about our chapter’s offerings to be able to take back to their companies. Now that you’ve gotten the dual per- spective on AGC Convention and our board retreat, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our annual AGC Houston BBQ Cook-Off that was held earlier this year! We had to switch up our venue, shifting over to the Sabercats Rugby Stadium from the Pasadena Fairgrounds. Despite the location change, our members showed up in force as usual. The food was great, the competition was fierce, and the networking was plentiful! This event requires a lot of effort from our entire staff, so a huge shoutout to them for bringing it all together to make our members happy! AGC Appreciation AGC Houston member Satterfield & Pontikes Construction, Inc. received the prestigious Build America Award.
