About
They are a scope nobody wrote down, a change nobody approved, and a crew nobody told the building about. Monument Construction Group was built to remove those three — for property managers, and for the general contractors who hire us as a trade partner.
James E. Thompson has spent his career on both ends of the same project — delivering work for national general contractors, and delivering work to property management portfolios.
The national builders taught him how a project gets documented: how scope is written so it survives a dispute, how a change is priced and authorized before anyone picks up a tool, how a schedule holds when four trades want the same corridor on the same Tuesday.
The property managers taught him why any of that matters. That a capital project is not a line item, it is a resident calling the leasing office. That the contractor who cannot be reached on Friday afternoon becomes the community manager’s weekend. That the number on the invoice is less important than whether it was the number everyone agreed to.
Monument Construction Group is what happens when someone builds a contractor around the second lesson while keeping the discipline of the first.
The principal’s own history. MCG’s client work is listed on Projects.
If the field deviates from it, MCG would rather it become a conversation than a silent loss.
From an MCG proposal · on why every assumption is written down
MCG is not trying to become a three-hundred-person general contractor.
Past a certain size, the person who priced your job is not the person who walked your property, and neither of them is the person who answers at four o’clock on a Friday when something has gone wrong at a community with two hundred residents in it. Here, that is one person — and his direct number is at the bottom of every page on this site.
That is the trade. You do not get a firm with a hundred crews. You get a firm where nothing has to be explained twice.
Most firms describe themselves by what they promise. These are easier to check, because you will know within one project whether they held.
When we open a ceiling and find something nobody could have seen at bid, the added scope is documented, priced, and sent for written authorization before the work continues. No cost is incurred without your prior approval. That sits in the contract, not in the sales conversation.
Exclusions, allowances and assumptions are stated at the front of the proposal — including the single assumption most likely to move the number, and what happens on either side of it. A surprise at invoice time is a failure of the proposal, not a fact of construction.
Every trade partner works under MCG’s contract and MCG’s coordination, carrying their own licenses and insurance. You never end up managing our subcontractor, and you never get a call telling you two vendors are blaming each other.
Protection goes down before the work starts and comes up at the end. Finishes disturbed by the work are restored as part of the scope, not quoted as an extra afterwards. Residents live there. It is their hallway, not our jobsite.
MCG also takes scope as a trade partner. Same standards, other side of the contract.
If you are running a project and need a scope taken off your plate — concrete and site work, plumbing infrastructure, exterior and envelope, demolition, hauling and logistics — MCG works under your contract, carries its own coverage, and manages its own trade partners. You get a subcontractor who documents, prices and closes out the way a general contractor wishes every sub would, because that is the side of the table this firm was trained on.
MCG has performed work with McLeod Builders, and is actively pursuing trade-partner and coordination roles on two project types in particular.
Amenity decks, hospitality roofs and elevated structures on buildings that keep operating while the work happens. MCG structures this work on the owner’s side of the table — developing the scope, then running a qualifications-and-pricing process to select the builder — or takes the trade scope directly. MCG holds that owner-side role today on a hotel rooftop redevelopment in Washington, DC.
The DMV has more of this coming than it has contractors who understand it. Conversion work is plumbing infrastructure, envelope, demolition and phased trade sequencing inside a building that is often still partly tenanted — which is the same discipline MCG applies in occupied multifamily, at a different scale.
Prequalification packages and references available on request.
MCG operates from Rockville, Maryland, and serves Maryland, Washington DC and Northern Virginia — close enough to be on your site the same week you call.
The paperwork your vendor onboarding asks for, stated up front rather than chased down later.
“Are you licensed?” has a different correct answer in each of the three jurisdictions we work in, and a contractor who gives you the same answer for all three has not read the statute. Here is ours, state by state.
MCG holds a District of Columbia General Contractor / Construction Manager license, issued under a Basic Business License. License number and a copy of the certificate are issued on request.
Maryland issues no statewide general contractor license for commercial construction. Commercial work is regulated at the county and municipal level through permitting and through the trade licenses the individual trades must hold. MCG pulls permits in the jurisdiction of the work, and its plumbing, electrical and HVACR partners carry the Maryland licenses their scopes require.
The Maryland Home Improvement Commission license governs home improvement work on residential property. The common areas and structural systems of buildings with four or more dwelling units sit outside it — which is where MCG’s multifamily work happens. MCG is obtaining MHIC licensure as well, so the question never has to be litigated on a proposal.
Every trade partner on an MCG job carries its own license and its own insurance, under MCG’s contract rather than yours. Certificates, endorsements and license copies go out with the prequalification package.
No-cost site assessment and scope development for any community in your portfolio. Bring the item that has been sitting on your capital list — we will tell you what it actually takes.