Amir Kassaian, General Manager of Luxton Construction Inc Profile

Amir Kassaian
General Manager
Luxton Construction Inc


Amir Kassaian, General Manager of Luxton Construction Inc Certificate

Luxton Construction Inc.'s General Manager, Amir Kassaian, is gratified with the company's achievements from a small foundation to a major boon in the construction industry. He dedicated more than fifteen years of his life working across Canada for various industry giants making his way up as a top manager before co-founding Luxton Construction Inc. with his two like-minded partners in 2016. Luxton, founded in 2016, is now one of Canada’s fastest-growing construction firms. In December 2021, OnSite and SitePartners recognized Amir as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in Canadian Construction.

Fostering an attitude of "I can do it" is something that everyone should imbibe in their profession. Amir did just that and was successful in founding Luxton Construction Inc.

Amir, as a motivational leader, not only walks in his employees' shoes, but also makes sure they are heard, challenged, and encouraged to be their best. He believes that the younger employees are the company's future, and that they should understand and drive the organization to greater heights. He claims that his employees are his most valuable asset, and they are not to be blamed for any failures, instead blaming his own mentorship. Amir says a culture of continuous improvement, which revolves around clear communication of expectations, leading by example, monitoring results, and making continuous adjustments will lead to the company’s success. He empowers his employees and pays attention to discussions and takes their opinions and proposals seriously in shaping Luxton’s future.

In order to get his employees aligned and recognized for the company’s success, he organizes seminars discussing the future of Luxton and has established programs like employee reward and recognition program. Amir advocates for all his employees to develop greater talents and master new skills. If they don't continue to research and upgrade, they will be obsolete in the market, opines Amir. Amir has established programs within Luxton than encourages both his craft and staff employees to self-invest. Amir has also set and embodies the company’s core values of safety, quality of work, exceeding clients’ expectations, empowering his people, protecting the environment, giving back to the communities they live and work in and conducting business with utmost honesty and integrity.

Amir is a fervent admirer of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. He mentions that these two individuals were determined to challenge the status quo and managed to offer products to the market that were “far superior to the competition”. He appreciates their approach of leading by example, being at the front lines to understand the problems at hand, and having unwavering commitment to the quality of their products and services. They focused on a few key projects every year and worked as a team, says Amir. He follows in their footsteps by having a vision and objective of hiring and training the right people based on common sense and reliability and focusing on what matters. He mentions “deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” He continues to explain “as a growing business there are many opportunities and distractions that come along the way, it is key to remain focused on key competencies and be able to materialize on opportunities but also as important to be able to recognize distractions to avoid wasting valuable resources on them.”

When it comes to key differentiating factors for Luxton’s success, Amir identifies implementation of best-in-class processes, systems and technology as well as taking on strategically challenging projects in the early days. Amir had implemented multiple Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for multibillion-dollar organizations around the world. He introduced some of the same systems and technologies at Luxton. Procore is at the heart of their operation, it is a top construction management software that covers all aspects of a project like document control, budgeting, forecasting, invoicing, timesheets, and the list continues. Estimating happens in Bid-2-Win, another well-known software in the market. SiteDocs is Luxton’s safety management software and they use SAP Concur for accounting and expense management. Hilti On-Track is used to track the movement and repairs of their assets and Luxton has recently rolled out Beanworks as their AP Automation tool, saving countless hours of manual work. Another key differentiating factor to their success was taking on strategically challenging projects where the competition didn’t dare to touch. Amir explains: “with our problem-solving attitude Luxton executed projects all over BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. The projects all varied in scope too. You don’t find too many construction companies that can take on the range of scopes Luxton performed and in the many geographic areas Luxton was present in their first two years of operation.”

As Amir states, we have a strategy for 2030 and 2040 with the goal of being a $50 million top-line general contractor by 2030 and tripling it by 2040. Our plan is to perform larger projects and move them geographically closer to the base. The Heavy Civil division will take care of bridges, culverts, retaining walls, slope stabilization, and concrete projects, says Amir. Our Marine division will be more specialized and in charge of pile driving, dock and wharf construction, cofferdams, sheet pilling, dredging and more. The Buildings division will concentrate on commercial and institutional building construction, envelope rehabilitation, and tenant upgrades. We shall fortify our ties with indigenous bands and businesses in the hope of collaborating for the mutual benefit of all parties, says Amir.

Luxton’s success in the last four years is undeniable, and it has paved the way for a strong future. Amir concludes, “we are just getting started and look forward to building new competencies, executing more specialized work, and creating further alliances within the market while growing our people to become the top performers of the industry.”


Company

Luxton Construction Inc

Management

Amir Kassaian
General Manager
Luxton Construction Inc

Description

Luxton Construction is a General Contractor based in Vancouver, British Columbia committed to providing quality service for our customers throughout Canada. We offer a diverse range of services including General Contracting, Design-Build, and Project Management services under a variety of contracting methods.


Construction Leaders Magazine 2022