YESCO Contracting, Inc. President Jim McClelland works on a lighting project for a condominium complex.

The new facade for Planet Fitness is completed at the Edgewood Towne Center in Pittsburgh, PA.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, and Jim McClelland sat up in bed.

“I woke up,” Jim says, “and I thought, ‘I have it.’ ”

His epiphany was coming up with the name for his new commercial and residential general contracting company based in Washington, Pennsylvania. At that moment, he realized it should be called YESCO.

YESCO would stand for “Your Exceptional Service Company.” The name sounded right and aptly describes Jim’s and his wife Darlene Jones-McClelland’s approach to business: a dedicated focus on real service. Additionally, Jim, who is President, liked the positive vibes coming from the word “yes.”

The firm, formed in 2004, performs a broad range of construction service activities, from renovating and remodeling to refurbishing and rebuilding, for equal parts commercial and residential customers. But, until recently, the company was a part-time venture.

When Jim moved back east to Washington, Pennsylvania, from the San Francisco Bay area, his goal was to be closer to his family origins.

Once Jim and his family resettled in Pennsylvania, he started YESCO to take care of smaller residential projects and repairs. He’d seen an opportunity when he observed that very few construction companies were willing to consider residential projects of less than $10,000. Within two years, he had six employees and the company was performing bathroom and kitchen remodels throughout Washington County.

“I discovered our niche was in midsized residential construction projects like remodels, new bathrooms, bedrooms, basements and decks. I had a few employees, and soon it was all hands on deck,” he recalls. “Through referrals, our residential work gradually began attracting commercial customers as well.”

Jim likes to say, “We may not have built the house, but we will do just about everything else within those walls.”

Jim took a job as Supervisor of Buildings and Grounds for the McGuffey School District in Claysville, Pennsylvania. While there, he directed facilities operations and construction needs for three school buildings and one leased facility.

“I started at McGuffey School District to help provide health insurance for my children. That is when I downsized YESCO to a part-time venture,” he says.

That position led to a job as Project Manager for H. E. Neumann Company where, among other tasks, he collaborated with clients on delivering construction designs of new HVAC systems. Later, he became Director of Facilities for the Plum Borough School District.

During that period, he performed ADA upgrades through YESCO and developed greater contacts in the regional construction industry. Finally, nearly three years ago, Jim and Darlene decided to return to construction work full time. They incorporated the business and rebranded it as YESCO Contracting, Inc. in June 2019.

Service Experience Attracts Repeat Business

Darlene, who serves as Vice President/Owner, says YESCO Contracting enjoys repeat business, and many of these clients call sometime after their last project in order to offer up a whole new project. She credits this return business to the team’s dedication to doing jobs correctly and their attention to service.

“Often, we’ll have someone call us to fix something that someone else had done incorrectly or to finish what someone else had started and abandoned,” Darlene says.

In addition to positive word-of-mouth referrals, YESCO Contracting gets a significant portion of its residential work from Better Business Bureau (BBB) ratings.

“We have an A+ rating with BBB, but I never would have expected so many new clients just from that source,” he admits. “It makes me very happy.”

Long-Term Relationship with Pure Install

Jim and Darlene love to talk about their ongoing relationship with Pure Install, which began several years ago. They describe Pure Install as a logistics company that provides assembly, installation, repair and maintenance services for health care, hospitality, retail, commercial and residential needs. YESCO Contracting began its work with them when Pure Install asked Jim and Darlene to have their team assemble water rowers in residences.

A water rower is a stationary piece of exercise equipment designed to provide a cardiovascular workout. Jim says requests for assembly and installs of water rowers skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic because many people were looking for a safe way to exercise in their homes.

“We were doing between 5-12 installations of the wood-framed rowers each month,” he says.

Water rower projects soon led to other assignments from Pure Install. One was to build display racks, and another project involved the removal, recycling and destruction of old 4G equipment from multiple cell towers that were upgrading to 5G.

Darlene adds, “It became clear that we were developing a significant level of trust with Pure Install.”

Another Pure Install project was to add rigid sheet protection to drywall in an assisted living facility in West Virginia. YESCO Contracting’s team replaced handrails, door guards, corner guards and kick plates throughout the building. Jim and Darlene are hoping to be hired to do the same work for Pure Install in 14 other assisted living facilities located in the tri-state area.

Jim says that often, product manufacturers’ representatives who distribute through Pure Install will request that YESCO Contracting be chosen for new assignments because of their good work from previous jobs.

One example is DSI, which distributes storage racks, server racks, computer racks, server cabinets and accessories. In this case, DSI was supplying storage racks for surgery suites for six University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) hospital locations.

“These are aluminum racks with shelving and wheels, which needed to be assembled on-site at the hospitals and then installed,” Jim says. “The DSI representative asked Pure Install to request us to do their installations because of the relationship we’d established.

“In fact, more than a dozen manufacturers’ representatives who work with Pure Install have asked for us by name,” he adds.

“I discovered our niche was in midsized residential construction projects like remodels, new bathrooms, bedrooms, basements and decks. I had a few employees, and soon it was all hands on deck.” Jim McClelland, President, YESCO Contracting, Inc.

Forging Friendships with Clients

“I think part of the reason for our growth is that I believe in building relationships with the people we do work for. We like talking to our clients and getting to know them—that way, our relationship often extends beyond just the project. We work hard to solve any problems, discuss schedule issues and keep the clients involved in the project,” he explains. “As a result, we frequently end up making friends with these customers.”

A few years ago, he was upgrading bathrooms in a 1930s-era warehouse to meet ADA specifications. The project began to expand and led to plumbing and other construction work for a soil engineering laboratory that was going to occupy the space.

Soon, other commercial jobs came their way and YESCO Contracting was becoming more firmly established as a contractor to both residential and commercial customers.

“Our goal is to keep a 50-50 balance in both types of work and to grow as a company in order to take on bigger projects,” he explains. “Our main commercial target customers are mid- to large-size general contractors to whom we can serve as subcontractors.

“For them, we primarily perform demolition work, rough and finished carpentry, insulation, drywall and acoustic ceiling installation, he says. “And we’ve come to rely on The Blue Book Network for our commercial leads and referrals.”

One of the company’s valued employees is Frankie Crawford, Lead Carpenter, whom Jim says serves as a kind of quarterback for his team. “We set the project goals for Frankie, and he then makes sure everyone on his team knows what ‘plays’ they are to perform.

“Frankie has been with us just about a year now, but he has extensive construction experience learned by working for his father’s construction company,” he adds.

Co-leading YESCO Contracting

Including Jim and Darlene, YESCO Contracting has nine employees. Darlene is in charge of human resources, operations and accounting, while Jim handles bidding/estimating and project management.

The Women-Owned Small Business enterprise has been a member of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce since 2004. And, within the community, YESCO Contracting has sponsored local sports teams and donated supplies to vacation bible schools.

Outside of YESCO Contracting, Darlene has coached youth sports for more than 35 years. This includes girls’ community softball at Washington Park, boys’ varsity volleyball at Canon-McMillan High School, track at Trinity Area School District and predominantly middle school and high school girls’ volleyball for the McGuffey School District.

Darlene’s background is in the hospitality industry, and she has worked more than 35 years for such chains as Holiday Inn, SpringHill Suites, DoubleTree by Hilton and Hampton by Hilton (formerly known as Hampton Inn). She worked her way up from the catering department at the Holiday Inn, becoming a member of the operational teams that opened hotels for SpringHill Suites and Double Tree brands. She also traveled around the U.S. to train other locations’ workers in food and beverage operations. She then topped off that career by becoming the General Manager of the Hampton Inn & Suites Wheeling–The Highlands in West Virginia.

For more than eight years, Jim also served as an officer on the board of directors for Sunlight Inc., a nonprofit that supports local recovery programs in Washington County.

The guiding principle for YESCO Contracting is service, and Jim and Darlene strive to ensure their employees adopt this service mentality, too. Clients appreciate their devotion to service, and the McClellands often receive compliments on their employees, who are trained to respect and communicate effectively with all other tradespeople on the job.

“We often jump in and try to serve in a coordinator role,” Jim says. “For us, a job is more than a task. We have to make sure we know what everyone else is doing on the job site and how our work fits into the overall project. As a service company, we have to ask questions and keep the lines of communication open because, from experience, we know that our approach leads to a successful project.”