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Long before Bryan Wesley was vice president of Wesley Construction, he was the junior high school kid sweeping job sites for his father Steve Wesley’s Baton Rouge-based company, earning his place among a crew of veterans who had held him as a baby.
But Bryan Wesley wanted to find his own footing. After college graduation, he worked in project management for Harvey-Cleary Builders in Houston. “I wanted to build some big sexy projects,” he says. One standout was 609 Main, a zero-lot line, 50-story high-rise in downtown Houston. He honed his craft at a company doing more than $2 billion in work annually, absorbing the processes that come with building at that scale.
In 2019, he returned to Baton Rouge and stepped into the family business, becoming vice president and co-owner a year later. What he found was a company that had thrived for decades on institutional knowledge and old-school communication. There had been no website, no social media presence, no advertising or signage. The only way anyone could know that Wesley Construction had worked on a project was if they were to check on the permit or happened to know his dad.
Despite that formerly low profile, the company has completed projects in more than 25 states, ranging from hotels to office buildings, retail stores and tenant build-outs.
The Roosevelt Hotel is the company’s crown jewel. As a teenager working on the job site in 2008, Bryan Wesley watched his father supervise 150 people renovating the New Orleans landmark after Hurricane Katrina. Steve Wesley wore khakis and a Hawaiian shirt to meet with investors in suits and ties. When Bryan Wesley questioned the wardrobe choice, his dad was unconcerned: “If they don’t want to do business with me for what I decide to wear, they don’t have to do business with me.”
Bryan Wesley modernized the operation, but he found he still had much to learn from his father. “I wanted to know how he’d been so successful with so few resources.” The answer, he found, was simplicity. Steve Wesley knew the right people, worked with clients he respected and never chased more than he could handle well.
That philosophy now anchors Bryan Wesley’s own approach. He turns down projects if they don’t inspire him. “My heart has to be in it,” he says.
In their own words
ORIGIN STORY
People drew me to construction. I enjoy being part of a team and there’s no way that anyone can do a construction project by themselves. And second, the tangibility of it: Seeing the progression. If you’ve ever pressure washed something, it’s so refreshing to see your progress instantaneously, and in construction there’s something happening every day.
PERSONAL BEST
We did two Make a Wish projects. We helped build a baseball field in Slaughter for a kid with congenital heart disease who was big into Little League. The other was an interactive play yard for a 5-year-old in Denham Springs with a neurological disorder. We were one of many who helped coordinate that and it was fully donated. It would be a $150,000 project if someone were getting paid to do it.
WORTH THE HYPE
Louisiana is last in a lot of things but first in a lot of things in construction. There are 2,200 students in construction management at LSU now. And college isn’t meant for everybody. There are a lot of awesome opportunities to make a good living in construction without a four-year degree.
WILD REQUESTS
During COVID, a hospital client called on a Thursday afternoon to say that the existing slab of their facility didn’t support new equipment they needed to install. We had to bring in new, thick concrete and it had to be a high-strength concrete that would cure quickly so we could put in new flooring and have that whole room scrubbed clean before surgery took place on Monday. We had guys working around the clock for four days. Everybody knew what had to be done. And it was an exciting thing to pull off.
FUTURE BUILDERS MAY CRINGE AT…
The lack of technology we had. But Dad is on to something. Simplicity is key. I have to constantly remind myself of that. At the end of the day, it takes someone with skill and ability to communicate. AI can do a lot, but somebody has to know what to tell AI. You have to use it as a tool and not a necessity.
