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Matt McCoy, president of South River Construction in Austin, Texas, has built his company around performing ICF construction. McCoy and his crew of 25 employees commonly work with more than a dozen of the industry's leading ICF brands, learning about the forms' advantages and disadvantages as they strive to create a successful building system with each project.

In 2000, McCoy was on track to join his father in the lumberyard business, but he found himself working on a jobsite with ICFs. McCoy liked the experience and went into business for himself doing mostly general contracting work on ICF projects. McCoy realized he was making more money on jobs where he worked as the subcontractor installing ICFs and about a year and a half ago reorganized his company to focus on subcontracting work as ICF installers.

Annually, South River Construction takes on a larger number of residential projects, but performs more square footage in block installation on commercial jobs. Business has doubled for McCoy each year since he started his company, and he says that while the residential market for ICFs is growing quite a bit, the commercial market is exploding.

"People are starting to realize that there is more to a building than construction cost,"

McCoy explains. "It's like buying a car - people don't just look at the price but also consider fuel economy and how often it's going to need repair. People want buildings that will have low operational costs and high efficiency. To them, building with ICFs is becoming more and more attractive."

It's all about the concrete
"What sets us apart from our competitors is that they don't know much about concrete," McCoy says. "We put our employees through ACI and PCA training. We are concrete experts who just happen to use concrete forms."