Seeing Red
Walker Ballinger
Vice president, Lauten Construction
Purcellville, Va.
Born November 21, 1977
The status quo doesn’t interest Walker Ballinger. How to sell, price, design, phase, staff a project — no customary method of doing business seems to escape this 27-year-old’s penchant for questioning, tweaking, and sometimes abandoning. His boss finds this both exhausting and invigorating.
“I feel like the old bull of the herd,” says Robert Lauten, who launched his $2 million company in 1987. “This guy is always running at me, challenging me to defend why we do things the way we do.”
Take job pricing. Lauten Construction works on a time-and-materials basis, but “Walker has this idea that fixed pricing would be more profitable,” Lauten says. For his part, Ballinger says he just wants to explore the feasibility of fixed pricing and intends “to nail down my understanding of the finances before I make any real judgments or suggestions.” He concedes that this passion for exploring all options borders on workaholism, and 75-hour weeks aren’t unusual. But they bear fruit. “Walker brings in all these new perspectives, and he challenges me to keep up,” Lauten muses. “He’s really reinvigorated the company.”
The son of an architect, Ballinger ruled out a career in architecture because, he jokes, “I wanted to see what I designed get built.” He spent his early 20s “bouncing around” with a few trade contractors before finding his niche in design/build at Lauten Construction, which he joined full-time in early 2003. Hired as a carpenter, he quickly proved himself indispensable, paving his own career path to project manager, then production manager, and then to vice president, where he oversees sales and design.
It’s a lot to juggle. Ballinger says he’s handling a dozen design projects, typically ranging from $50,000 remodels to $1.2 million custom homes. Much of his work involves properties that are, or appear to be, historic. “People come to me because they want a new house that looks like it’s been there 200 years,” Lauten laughs. Quality is integral in either case, as is a thoughtful balance of traditional design and modern amenities. Seth Warner, an architect with whom Ballinger works, notes that around rural, affluent Purcellville, “Lauten Construction is sort of like L.L. Bean. Everybody has total confidence they’ll take care of your problems.”
A current project called “the three-century house” should put that confidence to the test. Begun as a log cabin in the early 1700s, this rambling structure gained a brick addition a century later, a wood siding addition in the early 1900s, and indoor plumbing, via a two-bathroom addition, in the 1970s. “It’s kind of a unique case,” Ballinger says, noting that the young owners aren’t sure what they want other than a home that is more amenable to modern living and more coherent from a design perspective.
Ballinger’s solution is twofold, to this and every project. On the creative side, rather than dictating a mudroom here or a family room there, “I ask clients to give us a narrative list of what they want,” he says. He strives to envision their ideals, noting that homeowners themselves tend “to get writer’s block of the imagination.” He then sketches the concept before handing it off to an outside architect and moving on to the costing analysis.
On the organizational side, Ballinger manages projects within a well-defined framework of meetings, proposals, agreements, and phases, most of which he implemented at the company.
“I’m very structure-oriented, and I like procedure,” he says. He strives for constant improvement, through Sandler sales training, Business Networks peer counseling, and knowledge gleaned from involvement with local chapters of NARI and the National Association of Home Builders’ Remodelors Council, among others.
Yet Ballinger also recognizes that perfection is unattainable, and some things are beyond his control. “I do need to work on my time management,” he admits, in part to free up more time for his young son. “If I spread myself too thin, I can’t pay enough attention to anybody. I’m not going to drive myself to losing all my hair before I’m 30.”