John Beers, CHA, LEED® AP ('76)
Vice President
Bates Engineers/Contractors, Inc.
Lectured November 2, 2007
After graduating from Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management in 1976, John Beers started his hospitality career with Hilton Hotels Corporation at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston. He then moved to the 1,200-room Atlanta Hilton Hotel & Towers where he was promoted through several upper-management positions within the food & beverage department. The five years spent with Hilton led to an opportunity with the 400-room Atlanta Dunfey Hotel as director of food & beverage.In 1982, John left the management ranks of large corporate hotels and accepted a position as vice president/director of operations for a small hotel management firm. This step provided a myriad of management challenges that prepared him to start his own hotel management and development company. Charter Lodging Management was incorporated in 1984 as a full-service hotel management firm with the specific mission of developing Charter House Inns in secondary market areas. Properties included restaurants, lounges, banquet space and hotel rooms. The company grew for eight years before tax law changes negatively impacted the feasibility of future hotel development.
A career crossroads presented itself in 1992 when one of the stockholders of Charter Lodging Management offered John the chance to start a career in the industrial construction business. He began by estimating and managing small- to mid-size industrial construction projects throughout the Southeast, and then joined Bates Engineers/Contractors as a project manager, where he was later promoted to vice president. John was instrumental in implementing computerized construction estimating, cost accounting interfaces and computer networking throughout all departments. Today, his duties include daily management of large construction projects, IT administration and monitoring multi-corporation accounting operations. His most recent projects include a two-bay C-130 aircraft hangar for the U.S. Air Force, an aircraft parts warehouse/administration building for the U.S. Army and a food-grade peanut oil refinery capable of supplying enough oil for the entire U.S. market.