Spire Consulting Group of Austin, Texas, was named as the 2023 Diverse Business of the Year award winner by the Associated General Contractors of America, association officials announced March 31. The association also awarded Diversity and Inclusion Excellence Awards, sponsored by WTW, to Hensel Phelps; Gilbane Building Company; Battaglia Associates, Inc.; and Bermudez Longo Díaz Massó, LLC.

“The intent of these awards is to identify the construction and related businesses that are leading the way in making our industry more inclusive and more diverse,” said Lester C. Snyder, the association’s 2023 president and executive vice president of Brightline West in Las Vegas. “We want to recognize these firms’ outstanding progress. As important, we want to inspire the rest of the industry to learn from these firms and build on their successes.”

Spire Consulting Group, LLC is a Hispanic-owned, full-service, fully integrated construction consulting firm that adds value across the entire construction project life cycle. Spire began based on the premise of assisting clients with navigating complex construction projects by applying lessons learned to prevent cost and schedule overruns. Spire’s proactive (construction advisory, project controls and project management) service lines and forensic (dispute resolution) service line constantly share information with each other to optimize our learnings from the beginning of construction projects to the end.

In addition to naming Spire Consulting Group, LLC as the Diverse Business of the Year, Snyder also announced four other winners of the association’s sixth annual Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Awards. Hensel Phelps, based in Colorado, won the Association’s Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Grand Award, which goes to the firm who scores the highest number of points out of any of the Diversity & Inclusion Excellence categories. Gilbane Building Company, located in Providence, Rhode Island, won the Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Award for a large contractor. San Juan, Puerto Rico’s Bermudez Longo Díaz Massó, LLC won the Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Award for a mid-sized contractor. And the Diversity & Inclusion Excellence Award for a small contractor went to Battaglia Associates, Inc. in New Castle, Delaware.

The five awards were presented during the association’s annual convention in Las Vegas in February. A diverse panel of judges, representing all aspects of construction, evaluated the submissions based on three criteria: corporate commitment to diversity & inclusion, workforce diversity & inclusion initiatives, and subcontractor/supply chain diversity & inclusion initiatives, Snyder noted.