Cloudy with occasional rain...mainly in the morning. Morning high of 41F with temps falling to near freezing. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Higher wind gusts possible..
Tonight
Mostly cloudy. Gusty winds this evening. Low 23F. Winds WNW at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Scott Lewis, chief operating officer of The Wesson Group, says the Johnstown construction company has work booked through the end of 2026 and has plans to add more staff.
Scott Lewis, a licensed professional engineer, is chief operating officer of The Wesson Group, and has been with the Johnstown construction firm since it was founded in 2014.
Scott Lewis, chief operating officer of The Wesson Group, says the Johnstown construction company has work booked through the end of 2026 and has plans to add more staff.
Scott Lewis, a licensed professional engineer, is chief operating officer of The Wesson Group, and has been with the Johnstown construction firm since it was founded in 2014.
When The Wesson Group was launched 11 years ago, the design-build construction company was involved with projects worth $5 to $10 million.
Today the projects average $100 million.
Demand for the company’s services is expected to remain constant this year and next, according to the company’s chief operating officer.
“We have a record level of backlog and that work goes through 2027,” said Scott Lewis, Wesson’s CEO and a state-licensed professional engineer. “We’re basically trying to book work for ’27, ’28 and ’29.”
The Wesson Group operates in six segments of the construction industry: wind and solar energy; electrical substation and transmission; heavy civil; transportation; infrastructure; and marine.
“Renewable power are the largest segments now,” Lewis said, noting how the company has been busy building big wind farms and sprawling installations involving solar panels.
Lewis was speaking inside from his office on the second floor of the Johnstown Professional Office Complex in the former Johnstown Hotel at 55 E. Main St. Wesson, an LLC formed in 2013, has always been based here, but has expanded four times since and now occupies space on the first and second floors. More than 60 people were on the payroll in early February, Lewis said, but that number swells to more than 200 during the warmer months when construction season is at its busiest.
“We have a strategic plan about growing our teams and trying to accommodate our customers,” Lewis said.
Eight new employees are scheduled to start in May.
Wesson leases its office space in Johnstown but Lewis said next year the company expects to open a training center on owned property elsewhere in the city. Many of the training sessions will involve workplace safety. Safety is baked into the company’s culture because of the often dangerous work performed by its employees.
Framed photos on display throughout the headquarters show past construction jobs completed by The Wesson Group, including bridge implosions and the erection of towers used to support large wind-turbine generators.
“Look at that,” Lewis said, pointing to a photo showing three tiny, helmeted heads as a large section of steel tower is raised into place by a crane. “Safety is more than a standard here. It’s a reflection of excellence and our way of life.”
Down the hall in a darkened conference room people sat around a table and watched a presentation on safety.
The Wesson Group is an LLC and a dozen people are its owners — officially called members. The company’s president is Tim Delaney. He holds a majority of the equity, but he, Lewis and others have held a stake since Wesson was formed 11 years ago.
The company is named after one of Delaney’s grandchildren. Lewis and Delaney and a few of the other founding members originally worked together for the Delaney Group, a Mayfield-based construction business that Delaney sold to a California company in 2007.
“Traditional construction, we used to do a lot of that in the ’90s and early 2000s,” Lewis said. “That’s where you’re given a set of plans, and we come up with a cost to build that project for the specs and the plans.”
By contrast, with the design-build structure a customer supplies The Wesson Group and other bidders with only a general concept of what is desired for a wind, solar or other infrastructure project.
“We have a lot of talented people here and they come up with a lot of good ideas,” Lewis said. “We might be able to give them the same outcome with a totally different design.”
A large whiteboard on a wall of the CEO’s office provided an illustration of the company’s busy operations and future projections. It was nearly covered with letters and numbers. Five projects were listed under the category of ground pursuits, 2024.
“Those are jobs that we wanted to break ground on — like, either start dropping trees or doing survey work,” Lewis said. “And we did.”
Another five projects were listed as ground pursuits for 2025, and marks next to two of them indicated they were underway. The Wesson Group does the majority of its work in New York but it has worked elsewhere, and some Pennsylvania jobs were shown on the whiteboard.
Nine projects were listed under future construction. These were jobs expected over the next three years. The wind, solar and other projects were being done by Wesson’s clients, Lewis said.
“Those are their next developments,” he added. “It’s our pipeline.”
The Wesson Group does a great deal of work under what are called L.N.T.P. and M.S.A. contracts, Lewis explained. These “limited notices to proceed” and “master service agreements” were also listed on the board.
“They’ll hire us to do geotechnical studies or to do up-front engineering like borings,” Lewis said.
Seven entries were listed under current contracts and there were six current clients. Some of Wesson’s competitors — national engineering firms — will send management teams to a project and subcontract the construction work to vendors.
The company has a fleet of dump trucks, excavators and other heavy equipment, and typically self-performs about 60% of a project’s work, Lewis said.
“We do concrete and we do earthwork,” he said. “We do rebar, forming. We do a lot of infrastructure piping — water, sewer, drainage.”
A project that looks good on paper — or on a computer monitor — might encounter issues when staff, equipment, materials and subcontractors are brought together to build it.
Fortunately, one major advantage of the company’s design-build capabilities is the ability to adapt midstream if a problem arises, Lewis said. The Wesson Group can make tweaks to their own designs.
“If something happens and it’s not working, we get the engineers out there and we make an adjustment and keep moving,” he said. “Construction doesn’t stop.”
