Stacey F. Johnson, S F Johnson Consulting & Construction Services CEO and Owner/Operator, sets out to supply services all contractors need when she founded her company in 2010.

Stacey Johnson, S F Johnson Consulting & Construction Services CEO and Owner/Operator, issues OSHA cards like these to clients who complete her OSHA training.

Stacey F. Johnson’s journey from insurance claims adjuster to construction project estimator to CEO and Owner/Operator of a booming construction consulting and services business, has not always been smooth sailing. In fact, she was even homeless for about two years before founding S F Johnson Consulting & Construction Services in Sacramento, California, in 2010.

Along the way, this single mother of three earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering Technology (EET), as well as various professional insurance designations. By 2021, Stacey had built a successful business and become an experienced construction estimator, winning well over 90 percent of the projects she helped clients bid.

“As a construction defect litigation adjuster, I loved defending contractors who were being sued for construction defects,” she says. “When I lost my insurance job during the economic crash of 2008 and became homeless, the desire to continue helping contractors never stopped. I literally started this business in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Camarillo, California. My internet was either the McDonald’s or Starbuck’s.”

Evolving Services

When she started her company, Stacey asked herself what she knew how to do that could still help contractors. She was very comfortable with strong, opinionated men, as her family’s makeup is overwhelmingly male, with six brothers, two sons and three grandsons, along with one daughter.

“I work with guys really well,” she says. “That’s always been my thing. Also, I developed a reputation for helping underdog type people. My entire life has been about service. I seek to provide services all contractors need. By asking questions, I discovered estimating was something most of them needed very badly. I went from a claims adjuster to an estimator, just by seeing what contractors wanted and needed.”

Stacey learned how to read schematics while getting her EET degree and says she found reviewing a set of plans to be very similar. Soon after starting her business, she was estimating about $2 million in projects every day, getting really good and fast at it. Her other services evolved from there.

“At first I built websites for contractors, using what I’d learned creating the website for my first nonprofit,” she says. “I taught them how to read construction plans after learning many of them didn’t know how. Once I got really good at estimating and wanted to expand, I thought, ‘I can teach what I know, and I know a lot.’ Then I went to learn OSHA standards and get certified because I knew they needed that, too.”

In addition to being Founder, CEO, Owner and Operator of S F Johnson Consulting & Construction Services today, Stacey serves as head estimator, teaches plan reading and estimating, and is a certified OSHA trainer.

Today, S F Johnson’s services range from estimating, to online education covering a variety of topics, to OSHA and safety training, to business certification and claims administration consulting, to labor and employee training.

“We supply services all contractors need,” Stacey says. “Whatever they need, I’m always able to take it a bit further. A natural extension of that is to learn as much as I can to help people. I’ve solved a lot of problems in the process.”

Winning Work

Thanks to Stacey’s training, S F Johnson employees are estimating experts in all construction market segments. Her strategy, which incorporates precise, highly digitized software, is a three-step process. Digitized takeoffs are guaranteed for 100 percent accuracy and pricing for all basic construction materials and labor calculations are based on national standards. All estimating information is organized in specialized Excel spreadsheets Stacey designed for each specific scope of work, based on what that contractor wants to see.

“As estimators, our goal is to help our clients win,” Stacey says. “It is not by luck that people win jobs. You win because there is a strategy to it. Winning consistently in competitive bidding takes understanding that lump sums and takeoff guesses won’t work. Our estimates are very tight. I try to give our customers a winning attitude, a mindset you bring to success.”

The company’s projects, especially those involving estimating, have taken them to all 50 states in the U.S. One plumbing contractor won two $2 million state projects based on Stacey’s winning strategy. According to Stacey, “Done his way, he would have lost. He had 55 percent overhead and profit in his estimate when he came to me. After I told him he was going to lose, he reduced them to what I recommended and ended up winning both contracts.”

Another client in Pennsylvania has won every estimating project S F Johnson has done for him over the past two years. He’s so pleased with the service that he plans to add Stacey’s company to his General Contractor license in California so she can work under his license.

Construction Education

Stacey is training her youngest son, Christopher Posey, to take over for her if she ever decides to retire. With four full-time employees today, Stacey is now poised to double her staff.

“I have been in the business long enough to know that we need to train the next generation of construction workers,” she says. “If they really want to work and are willing to learn, my desire is to teach people everything that I know, especially those who otherwise would not have an opportunity to learn. This is serious. This business has my name on it. My parents raised me to do something the best way that you can if you are going to do it at all.”

In her spare time, Stacey serves as Director of S F Johnson Family & Community Services, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization she formed to support the community with free educational services for children, seniors and the disabled, plus free online construction education for young adults who may be interested in the many facets of the construction industry. Its predecessor was the Association of African American Single Mothers, which Stacey founded in 1996. The organization’s nonprofit status was revoked while she was homeless, so Stacey decided to establish a different 501(c)(3) organization a couple of years ago.

She believes the construction industry offers many opportunities, and that’s why she wants to share information about it with others. “Construction is awesome,” she says. “I’ve made a good living at providing services to the industry. When you love something this much, it is not a job. I’m going to introduce you to it, and maybe you can make a good living at it, too. If you don’t work for me, you could possibly work for somebody else or even for yourself. There is so much opportunity in the area of construction. I would be so selfish at this point if I didn’t try to give away what I know, especially at this time when so many people have lost their jobs.”

Stacey is proud of her work. “This company and everything we try to do for profit and nonprofit is an extension of my parents, and I honor them in all I do,” she says. “They raised me to be the best and to serve. It is my intention to help other people. I am here to show people that if this Black girl from South Central Los Angeles can make it, anybody can!”