AJ O’Dell (right), President of Cedar Lane Excavation, and Vice President and senior estimator Sam Foster stand before the cedar-lined lane at their headquarters in Davidsonville, Maryland. These cedar trees provided inspiration for the company’s name.

As part of a retrofit of an existing sediment pond at an aggregate supplier’s yard in Hanover, Maryland, Cedar Lane Excavation is replacing the clay layer on the pond bottom.

When asked what sets Cedar Lane Excavation apart from other construction companies, AJ O’Dell, President of the Davidsonville, Maryland-based firm, does not hesitate before answering. “I’m out on every job, addressing concerns as needed,” he says matter-of-factly. “We can resolve problems pretty quickly because I’m so involved with what’s going on in the field. Customers can get in touch with me. We’re really responsive.”

Clients appreciate the company’s responsiveness as well as its commitment to ensuring they receive the best possible service, he says. “We have a lot of customers that we’ve worked with since we started nearly five years ago because we give them that kind of attention,” O’Dell adds. “We’ll often show customers how to do a job more efficiently and for less money than they planned. Once we have that kind of relationship built, it usually goes pretty well.”

Dirt Movers Extraordinaire

Cedar Lane Excavation “serves the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas and everything in between,” O’Dell says. As its name implies, the company is no stranger to earthwork. “What we really like to do is move dirt,” O’Dell says. “That’s what we strive to do.”

General services provided by the company include commercial and residential earthwork, commercial site work development and the provision of materials such as aggregate rock, gravel, sand, crushed asphalt, crushed concrete and riprap. Specific services include site clearing, grading, stormwater management, site maintenance, trucking, small utility jobs, commercial landscaping and planting, snow removal, and heavy highway and support excavation for bridge remediation projects. In particular, Cedar Lane Excavation specializes in jobs ranging in size from $5,000 to $500,000, O’Dell says.

Perfect Partners

When they formed Cedar Lane Excavation, O’Dell and Vice President and senior estimator Sam Foster were the only employees. “We were just two guys doing everything,” O’Dell says. “We started from nothing.”

The two had worked together at previous companies, where they learned how construction firms should and should not be run. “We saw what could go wrong with poor management,” Foster says. “We try to keep it simple, easy and honest.”

O’Dell and Foster, who is responsible for estimating and project management, have worked out an efficient division of labor. “Sam does most of the bids and submittals and all the related paperwork,” O’Dell says. “Then I get the work done. We both know what we have to do and we do it.”

Steady Growth

This approach has paid off in the form of steady growth. Since its founding in 2014, Cedar Lane Excavation has grown from two to 12 employees. “We’re a small company,” O’Dell says. “We’d like to keep it that way.”

The last thing that O’Dell and Foster want to do is get too big too soon. “We’re looking to grow, but we still want to be able to provide the current high level of service that our clients receive now,” O’Dell says. “That’s why people like working with us.”

Lessons from Seasoned Experts

For both O’Dell and Foster, working in construction offers a way to follow in the footsteps of previous generations. “My great-grandfather was in the logging business and owned a sawmill,” O’Dell says. “My grandfather worked with him. My father joined them and started the excavation part of their business.”

Growing up, O’Dell helped out with his family’s logging and construction work, gaining knowledge and experience from his relatives that he would put to good use later during his career. “I learned everything from them,” he says.

Foster’s father worked for a construction company, and Foster joined him on work sites during the summer, starting when he was about 13 years old. “I grew up in the field with my dad,” he says. “Construction was handed down from one generation to another.”

After graduating from high school, Foster entered the construction industry full time. Eventually, he worked for several years at a construction company, assisting the in-house surveyor. “I learned about the engineering side of things,” he says. Over time, Foster gained additional responsibilities, becoming a foreman. Given the combination of his field and engineering experience, Foster “just kind of fell into estimating,” he says.

O’Dell, Foster and Sean Ryder—the lead foreman at Cedar Lane Excavation—have 60 years of combined experience between them. “We all worked our way up through the ranks,” Foster says.

Pride of Work

This hard-won experience and the lessons learned along the way have engendered within O’Dell and Foster a strong sense of admiration for construction work itself, Foster says. “We take pride in doing this kind of work,” he adds. “We try to be like the generations before us. They had a real respect for the job.”

Having seen the reverence for construction held by previous generations who labored in the industry, O’Dell and Foster try to pass on this same appreciation to those who work for them today. “We try to teach them in the field,” Foster says. “We try to instill lessons, much like a father to a son.”

Through their actions on the job, the leaders of Cedar Lane Excavation do their best to illustrate what it means to hold construction in high regard. “We cultivate a sense of respect for the job and pride in our work,” Foster notes. “We hold on to a certain standard of excellence passed down from previous generations.”

“We run things very old school,” Foster adds. “We aim to establish personal relationships with everyone we work with. That’s really one of the main things that sets us apart.”