Building On Passion and Trust
by Nancy Oakley
Ron Williams recalls a moment from his youth when he was standing beside his father’s home. The fourth generation builder and owner of Winston-Salem’s Ron Williams Building Company stood next to his father. “He asked me, ‘Ron, what is it you want from this?’ And I said, ‘Dad, I just want to be one of the best. If you’ve got a nice project you want [built], I want to be one of the guys considered. I just want to be known as one of the top builders.’ That was the goal,” he says. “That’s still the goal.”
By “top builder,” Williams isn’t necessarily referring to large-scale projects with high price tags, though he has built them. Many of them. “It’s not about the crown moldings we buy to put into houses,” he says. For him, being the top means doing the absolute best job possible and going the extra mile. “My dad always said, ‘there’s just a little difference between right and wrong—and very little money. And sometimes no money. So just do it right,” Williams explains. That’s why he insisted on quarter-sawed white oak for extensive wood interior though quarter sawing wasn’t the most efficient way to cut logs—but the method allows room for the wood to breathe and prevents the walls and floors from buckling. It’s why you’ll see Williams placing steel rebars in foundation footings—though they’re not required by code. Or hiring a soil engineer to teach him about the composition of his houses’ foundations so he can learn what kind of rebar to install. “I want to learn, every time I build [a house],” says Williams. “I want to see a way I can improve what we just did. Is there an easier way? Is there an easier way to do it that does not sacrifice anything and improves the product for my customer?” His customers are certainly appreciative. “You made our dream on paper better than we could have imagined it,” one enthuses. “You made building a house a manageable job,” says another.
This desire to learn, to improve and tackle new challenges drives Williams. “What I call the great days, are when somebody throws something out there, and it scares you. And you get goose bumps,” he muses. Something like the “tricky contemporary” with a continuous round wall, or the palatial house with a 34-foot ceiling and 12-foot doors, two of which were arched and pocketed—and that was just in the foyer and library. Williams was equally excited to build a vault for Windsor Jewelers. Why? “I wanted to build a vault,” he says simply. He approached a bathroom remodel for a friend with not one but three computer drawings—with elevations—and will eagerly tell you about the barn he’s building for one client and the greenhouses he built for another. “As some would say, ‘Ron has a passion for his job. I love it,’” Williams says with a smile.
His passion and commitment to quality extend to his team with whom he has established ironclad trust. Many of them have been with Williams for 20 years; one of the “bib overall crowd” of Williams’ grandfather’s day retired under Williams’ tenure. When a grading contractor needed money to finish a job, Williams arrived on site, check in hand. And under a sweltering sun, he worked alongside the crew putting in foundation footings. He credits the success of his projects large and small to these carefully cultivated bonds. “The same demands exist on a very small job that takes only a few day or a large job that takes more than a year to complete. It doesn’t matter. Same guys. Same craftsmen, same painters, same everybody on the job,” Williams recalls. In the end, it’s only the job—any job—that matters. “We just do whatever. We build stuff,” says Williams. “That’s been my career forever.”
