New construction, completing repairs available from FBi Buildings

PEORIA, Ill. — FBi Buildings does more than constructing new post frame buildings — the company also completes repairs and renovations on existing structures.

“I think there are a lot of people who don’t know we do repairs and renovations because it’s relatively new for us, although we’ve always done it on our own buildings,” said Kyle Gardiner, regional sales manager for FBi Buildings.

“We’re finding there’s nobody in the marketplace doing repairs and renovations, so we get calls all the time and it could be an FBi building or anybody else’s building,” said Gardiner from his booth at the Greater Peoria Farm Show.

“There’s a lot of memories people have of buildings on their property, so we can put some extra life into them and get some more use out of them,” the sales manager said.

“We’ll do anything from working on a door or window to fully reskin a building or repair rotten posts,” he said. “I tell people I won’t tell you no until we look at it.”

FBi Buildings has repair and renovation crews that are separate from the new construction crews.

“Next year I think repairs and renovations will be 30% of our business,” Gardiner said. “There’s no company of our size that I know is doing that.”

Based in Remington, Indiana, the sales area for FBi Buildings includes all of Indiana and Illinois.

“We also go north into Michigan and Wisconsin, east into Ohio and west into Iowa with plans to grow our Iowa presence,” Gardiner said. “We just started going into Missouri and Kentucky, so our expansion path is west and south.”

Currently, FBi Buildings is offering a winter special of 12% off any repair, renovation or new construction.

“We are giving customers until Dec. 31 to engage with us and find the right solution,” Gardiner said.

Buildings for agricultural operations is the predominate customer base for FBi Buildings.

“But we do anything from suburban buildings in people’s backyards to indoor basketball courts, and pickleball courts have been a popular one recently,” Gardiner said. “We also serve the commercial market and have done a lot of municipality buildings the last couple of years.”

Customers interested in a FBi Building may be able to have it completed quicker than they expect.

“A lot of people don’t realize we build in the wintertime, but we’re scheduling for January,” the sales manager said. “That’s a big advantage to us because we have customers say that they didn’t know we could get to them that soon.”

For the repair and renovation work, Gardiner said, from the time a contract is signed, the FBi crews mobilize within three to five weeks.

“Really it’s the time it takes to get the materials,” he said.

For basic structural components, about 95% of the materials are readily accessible and don’t cause delays that impact customers.

“Some of the specially colored windows or cupolas have longer lead time, but most of the lead time falls into the time we’ve been scheduling for projects,” Gardiner said.

FBi has a large set of standard sizes for buildings to give customers a good starting point when thinking about the construction of a new building.

“But we don’t limit ourselves to that. We try to meet with customers on site to understand what their needs are and their future needs,” the sales manager said.

Gardiner encourages anyone who is thinking about purchasing a post frame building to contact FBi.

“Even if it’s a future project, we want to be a source of education and support to talk through things,” he said. “It’s our job to not only meet the customer’s wants and needs, but to propose some things that they haven’t considered.”

The FBi representatives will bring marking flags to a farm to help farmers get a visual picture of a future building.

“We do tours of other buildings because if someone is uncertain about the size, it’s a lot different when you see a building with items in it, so we like to bring a conceptual idea to reality,” Gardiner said.

“That’s been part of our success to engage a little differently with customers,” he said. “We don’t look at it as a building. We look at it as a solution to a problem.”