My Benesch My Team - Richard

Richard is a purpose-driven, nationally recognized general contracting firm committed to building spaces that create meaningful impact. Since 2014, they have delivered transformative projects across patient care facilities, mission-critical data centers, electronic healthcare upgrades, governmental rehabilitation efforts, and water treatment centers. Guided by a mission to strengthen communities and improve quality of life, Richard combines speed, simplicity, and safety with deep technical expertise.

The following is a testimonial from Jed Richard, Founder and CEO of Richard.

Tell me about Richard.

Richard is a national general contractor specializing in commercial, institutional, and mission-critical building projects. We serve both federal and private clients across 20 states and have grown to a team of nearly 200 people over the past decade. In addition to our core construction capabilities, we self-perform all interior finish work nationwide, which allows us to deliver consistent quality and enhanced control across every project.

We are also one of the nation’s leading healthcare builders, ranking as the third-largest federal healthcare builder and the 40th-largest healthcare builder overall. Over the past five years, we have completed more than $800 million in federal healthcare work, which has strengthened our expertise in delivering complex, high-impact environments where people work, heal, and thrive.

Richard has been named to the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list for six consecutive years and recognized as the Fastest-Growing Construction, Engineering, or Architecture Company in Chicago and No. 2 in Illinois. We’ve also appeared on Crain’s Chicago Business Fast 50 list for three of the last four years. In addition, both Inc. and Crain’s have named us a Best Place to Work, underscoring our purpose-driven culture and people-first approach.

How did you start working with Benesch?

The former vice chairman of AECOM, Grant McCullagh, had worked with Tom Crist at Benesch for many years. Grant was one of my mentors in business and connected Tom and me about 18 months ago because he thought Tom and Benesch would be a great fit to support Richard’s growth endeavors. Tom and I met for lunch and very quickly connected in a lot of different ways, both personally in terms of family and professionally in our values, which resonated with how I run my business. We started working together a few weeks later.

What does Benesch do for you?

Tom and various Benesch attorneys work with five or six people in different departments in our company to support us in a number of areas. That includes everything from protests to legal disputes to SBA small-business and large-business matters. They’ve done a lot of work to look at private contracts and new contracts from developers on the investment side and design-build side to ensure we’re safe and have the lowest possible risk profile moving forward. I see mergers and acquisitions as a key component of Richard’s long-term growth strategy, and we’ve already been approached by several companies about potential acquisition opportunities. Benesch has helped us on the due diligence side of those transactions.

What do you like about working with Tom, and Benesch in general?

I like that Tom is an outstanding human and 24/7 attorney who merges family and business together. We have a lot of the same values, and it’s very easy and transparent to work with him. I love the fact that he has a construction background. Some of the lawyers we’ve worked with in the past don’t necessarily understand the intricacies of scope and critical path and very specific technical applications on these complex projects we do. Tom and his team are able to distill things to their essential parts and are very confident in doing that. It really helps us move our projects and programs forward and take care of any disputes. Benesch and Richard share a lot of the same cultural values and philosophies as well, so we are well aligned.

What value have you found by working with Benesch?

There are a few things Benesch does well for us. Number one is technical capability and being a multifaceted organization, so whether it’s a real estate dispute or a contract dispute or an employee dispute, Benesch has the capabilities to meet our needs. Instead of having to consult separate specialized attorneys or firms for these matters, Benesch has them in-house, which is very effective.

Second, I like having a primary point of contact in Tom, who then liaises with the practices within Benesch to get the right people to us. Having that gatekeeper and guidance is a big deal for us. 

Third, I value the transparency and alignment in the way our firms do business. I think people partner with consultants and lawyers when they feel there’s a win-win to the relationship. I like the fact that Benesch has a big construction infrastructure group and has a lot of clients in the industry that you’ve worked with and helped in the past. It’s valuable that Benesch can potentially connect those clients to us so we can potentially partner with them as well.

Richard is growing tremendously—and growing fast. How do you feel about Benesch being able to support you as you grow?

I think Benesch’s group is large enough and horizontal enough that you could take care of all services under one roof. I feel good that, although we haven’t yet had to go outside of Tom for our needs, there are tiers to your different legal teams that could bill us hourly to take care of us. As we prioritize what we can spend and what the effort should be, you have both tenured lawyers and less tenured lawyers who can help us on smaller matters.

I also know that Benesch has won awards for growth and the “engineering” side of the house, is on the same lists we are, and has a lot of might around the country.

Another big piece of this is that I don’t see Richard’s headquarters moving anywhere other than Chicago, and Benesch’s offices are a quarter mile down the street from us. I know you’re growing a larger presence here, and I think having that arm’s reach geography helps overall. But Tom has no problem getting on a plane and taking care of our most important matters and has a good sense and feel of what I need to do to grow the company. He’s a visionary partner for me, so he asks a lot of questions about how I want to grow and what I value and what’s important to the company. He keeps that in the back of his head, and he’s always looking for ways to try to partner and get the right people to our company. 

Is there anything I haven’t touched on that you’d like to mention?

I think it’s really great that we’ve built a relationship over the last year and a half, and Tom’s son, Morgan Crist, came and interned for us this summer. He probably has legal aspirations himself, but he really wants to learn how to be a very good builder—much like his dad went through the pipeline earlier in his career. The fact that we trust each other with people development speaks a lot to the relationship and where it’s going to go over time. That’s a huge value for both of us that we care about the same young humans and engineers growing up in this organization. We’re purpose builders and community builders before anything else, and the quality of our work reflects that.